Circus Nifty Fifty Report

So last night was the second leg of my three leg attempt to win the world. Here's how it went.

Caught up pre game with George Lawson, both Trett brothers and a few others and had some cracking banter as per. My starting table was pretty nice, and easier than the Asper's game. I'm in the 9 hole and the only players I recognise are Simmy in the one seat, Shaf, a circus cash reg in seat ten and Steven the teacher in seat 8.

First hand I find 66 and open the pot to 125 in what is basically the hijack and immediately get 3bet by Shaf to 525. Everyone else folds and I tell him Aces good, fold and he shows AA. Yip. Nice hand sir.

A little later it folds to Stephen in the SB and he completes. He basically dares me to shove. I do with KK. Nice life. He instamucks. Sigh.

I wanna talk about a hand that I wasn't involved in at all, in the first level where I felt both players played it pretty turbo good. Simmy opens the hijack to 200 and gets flatted by CO before button makes it 400. I instaput button on QQ+, caus I think his button min-3bet range in the first level must just be really small, it's almost always a raise to induce. Simmy calls as does the button. At this point we've got a 1275 pot at 25/50 and we didn't see the flop yet. I perk up and start watching more intently.

Flop is JJx and Simmy fires 700 or so, CO folds and Button (who I'm reliably informed is called 'Waspy' and a good UK Circuit pro, but we'll get to that in a bit) calls pretty quickly. Simmy then bets 1500 on the most inconsequential turn ever, like a 4 or something and gets called pretty quickly. The river is an offsuit Ten and Simmy thinks for about 0.3 seconds and just jams 7.5k or so into a 5.5k pot (numbers might not quite add up, but he's definitely overbet the pot on the end).

In my head, this is what happens....."ssssssssssssssssssssssssick, Simmy's fucking flops quads. It's the only hand he can play like this. He almost always VBs all other Jacks a set of Tens for tens full too...wowowowow, he's put V on KK or AA like me (he now can't have queens as he prolly raises the turn and he almost never has a Jack because he'd raise the turn (put a flushdraw out there)) wow, sick, what a great bet. V can almost never put Simmy on a Jack here. Like, never. All his small Jack's he check calls, all his big Jack's he VBs river, not shoved. Sick hand."

V is in the tank, and the longer he tanks the more I rule out KK from his range, he pretty much has only AA now because he's already called with a Jack and already mucked KK. V plays well to pass caus it's really hard to think Simmy has a Jack there and as Simmy goes to muck I say 'show me the quads, Simmy, you had quads, right?' and Simmy, with the most surprised look on his face ever says 'yeah, I did, actually..' and shows em.

Must be nice to deal yourself Quads Simmeister. I actually said to him that I didn't think he had that level. That's such an advanced play to shove the river there because most people would probably check or lead really small looking to get value. The way Simmy and I both thought about the hand (since we discussed it, obv) was that he *never* gets raised on the end, unless V has Tens full, which is unlikly given the min-raise pre and the call on the turn being like instaquick so therefore he can bet like 2500 pretty profitably and gets called most of the time. He can check, but he rarely gets lead into either, I think. So basically a smallish vb of 2000 to 2500 seems optimal, but think of the long term. Effective stacks are like 7500. He only needs to get called with his overshove like 1/3 of the time to make it breakeven cEV-wise when he bets 2500 on the end (assuming V *never* folds) vs 7500. I actually think that he gets called a lot more often than 1/3, and unfortunately Simmy ran into a player capable of making a great fold. Additionally, I feel that since it's so much harder to put Simmy on even a bare Jack with an overshove, vs what it might be with a smaller value bet, that he probably makes 2500 more chips everytime he overbets than when he just leads.

I hope that makes sense.

For my part, I make a nice little stack mainly by reading the game well and valuebetting 4th pair a couple of times, lose a bit back making a slightly lose call with QJcc against AQo AIpF when dude had opened every pot since the start of 200/400. Maybe slightly loose against the range I guess, but I can't raise fold my hand and I'd already raised. Anyway, I go through the blinds and such and I make it to 300/600 when I'm in the BB with 8.5k (never higher than 14k) and Waspy (V from quads hand, covers me by about 6 or 7k) opens to 2k in EMP. He's been pretty tight for a while, but when I look at Aces I don't really start to think about my hand. I wanna play for stacks and the best way to do that is call and jam any nice looking flop. I do, and duely jam on KJx, 2 spades. He calls, after a very long tank, pretty sure I induced it by looking superweak, allsorts of reverse tells going on (looking away then insta-looking at his chips when he put his hand on them, etc) and he announced Merry Christmas ans shows AJdd. Jack on the turn, nice life. Can't win 90%ers. Meh.

I think it's a pretty good call against the range I'm suppose to have there to be honest. Poker's about making your opponent make mistakes and I think he made a pretty big one there, caus of the way I played the hand. Meh, sometimes slowplaying works, sometimes it doesn't. I'm still happy with how I played. Not too happy with how I reacted to the beat. Like a bit of a dick, actually. Sorry Waspy. I find out later he's a UK circuit pro and if I'm making a player of that caliber make a mistake then I'm doing something right.

Bring on Saturday and the longer levels and wowowowowow am I gonna crush. Hard. Suits my game down to the ground.