ThePokerResource.net: A Rounder’s blog

Well it’s been a while since my last blog and I have played plenty of tournaments in between. Pretty much all of the NL tournys with little or no success. Anyways, I will briefly go through some of the tourneys to try and get you guys up to speed.

Sat. January 21, $300 NL with rebuys

Whenever I play rebuy tourneys I rebuy right away. This is because doubling from 1k to 2k is much smaller than doubling up from 2k to 4k. If you double up right away you probably won’t need to invest any more money into the tournament. Well, the day didn’t really go as planned. I didn’t make any progress during the rebuy period, and pretty much ended the first 3 levels with 3k. At my table there wasn’t much gambling until David Pham showed up about 10 minutes before the rebuy period ended. He proceeded to move in the first two hands, which he lost, and then did a double rebuy. So on the third hand he folds. I look down at Aces on the button and raise…get no callers…Burn. After the break I do a single add-on and have about 4k in chips. I miss a few flops and blind down to about 3k, when I look down at 2 aces and raise to 600, with the blinds at 100-200. A pretty solid player then moves in for 1400 more, which of course I call and he shows AKs.  I win to get back up to about 5k.

The next big hand I won, a short stack moved in for 1200 with KJ off, I quickly call with KK in the SB, and I’m up to about 6500 in chips…feeling pretty good. The next hand I play I raise UTG (under the gun) with KQd and get a caller immediately behind me with 1400 in chips. I’m positive he has a pretty big hand but when the flop comes Q86. I bet his last 800 and he calls with a pair of 10s. So what comes on the turn and river: 10 and 10.  Great, I just lost to quads, and he hits his 2 outer. I’m back down to about 5500. So the next round I limp UTG with 77 for 200. and David Pham raises to 900 out of the SB. The BB folds, so I take about 30 seconds, and move in for 5500. Now before we analyze this play, let me tell you what is going through my mind at this point. The very hand before David lost a race with AQh in the BB vs JJ from the SB, and lost about 2k in chips, bringing his stack down to about 5k, and so I have him covered by like 400 in chips. Also, since he has been to the table, the only 3 hands I have showed him are KK, AA and KQs. Furthermore, the last tournament we played sitting at the same table was at the Bellagio in November, and I played rock solid tight. I know he is kind of steamed up, and I also know my image is squeaky tight, so my read on his hand is no pair AJ or maybe AQ at best. I also know that David gets put to the test all the time, and he makes great calls and lay downs. So based on all this information I move in. Unfortunately, he quickly calls with AKs, Damn, the only non-pair hand he would call with. The flop comes Q 9 6, turn K, river K…I’m crippled and bust out shortly after. I spent a lot of analysis on this hand and truly feel I made the right play with the information mentioned. I obviously took on some unnecessary risk but truly felt he would have folded, and if he didn’t, I could win the race and have about 12k, which would be a great spot to play the rest of the tournament. I have no regrets on this hand or the way I played it.

Tues. Jan 24^th, $500 NL with one optional rebuy

This tournament was quite a bad run for me. I never really had a chance. I had no hands, blinded down and missed a whole bunch of flops. I still survived to about the 200-400 level, and about 40% of the field left. I ended up getting it all in with A9s. Flopped nothing, but turned the nut flush draw and gutshot straight draw…and missed. I would’ve turned my 1k stack to roughly over 5k.  I did however get busted out by no other than Jerry Buss, the owner of the Lakers and really started to get discouraged about my LAPC performance up to date.