I’m continuing with the tournaments – it’s probably just luck but I seem to be doing better at them than I was with the cash tables. Not enough games played yet to really tell, but I’m enjoying them quite a bit. There’s a lot more satisfaction at crushing 8 other people at a table completely than there is with the occasional all-in cash win.
Since today’s a tennis day I’ve been going with $1 9seater SNGs – they all seem to take an hour if I get all the way through, and I don’t want to be stuck in the middle of a MTT when I need to leave for the courts.
I started out well, taking first place in the first three tournaments. That probably made me a bit cocky, and I crashed out of the next five! Then I took a 2nd place in the final table I was playing. I’m not sure how I can represent that visually – I guess an advantage of cash tables is you end up with a nice graph soaring majestically upwards (ahem). Maybe this’ll do;
Well, maybe not. I’ll have to think of something.
I’m fairly pleased with that (results of the SNGs that is). I’ll have to figure out why I lost the others – one was an easy bad beat where my QQ preflop all-in was beat by some trash, but the others I think I just played poorly. It seems if I can get to the bubble with an average stack then I’m fine – I don’t need to be dominating the table at that point since everyone tightens up and it’s easy to just take their chips from them. Once past the bubble I’m usually dominating and it remains easy enough, and then HU has been astoundingly simple – I keep stealing and bullying, while my opponents have been remaining tight and often let me check the BB. I doubt it’ll stay this simple at higher levels, but for now it’s nice to play stress free games.
The issue is what happened with those 4 other games (not including the bad beat there) – I seemed to make several bad plays such as this;
$1.00+$0.20
9 players
Stacks:
UTG (2750)
UTG+1 (2050)
MP1 (1020)
MP2 (1440)
MP3 (1460)
CO (1285)
Hero (BTN) (1720)
SB (1710)
BB (65)
Blinds: 15/30
Pre-flop: (45, 9 players) Hero is BTN 9
T
3 folds, MP2 raises to 120, 2 folds, Hero calls 120, 1 fold, BB goes all-in 35
Flop: 6
K
T
(320, 3 players)
MP2 bets 150, Hero calls 150
Turn: 8
(620, 3 players)
MP2 bets 180, Hero goes all-in 1,450, MP2 goes all-in 990
River: 6
(3,240, 3 players)
Final Pot: 2,960
MP2 shows: K
J
Hero shows: 9
T
BB shows: 3
5
MP2 wins 2,960 ( won +1,520 )
Hero wins 280 ( lost -1,440 )
BB lost -65
I wouldn’t play that hand like that at a cash game, and the blinds are still so low that risky shoves like that are really unnecessary. That’s the overconfidence from winning the first three tournaments, which is tilt really. As every teacher I’ve ever known has said to me, ‘must do better’…
Tomorrow (or maybe tonight if I feel like it) will be MTT day. After seeing Yegor’s comment about satellites I’m tempted to see what’s on offer, or maybe I’ll try the PS steps if I can figure it out.
ps. Ordered Kill Everyone from Amazon, should be getting it next week. Also haven’t got round to pokerpad yet, and I realised that there’s not much point trying the mouse wheel thing – I don’t use a mouse with my laptop (duh)






















