Karma

I just got back from a poker game in Mossville (went with Toby and Gordo), and it was indeed an experience. Buy in was 30 + 20 for a rebuy/reload. There were 3 tables (19 players) and everybody but one rebought, so that made 880 in the pot. Top 4 places paid - (440, 260, 120 and 60)... We played in some guy's garage, and well over half of the players were smokers. Normally that's not a big deal, but when you've got a couple dozen people in a garage and it's bone-chilling cold outside, you can't open up the doors and let the fresh air in - you'd freeze your butt off!! By the end of the night, I could barely see my own cards through all the smoke in there.

Gordo and Toby started out at the same table, but I was at a table where I didn't know anybody. My goal when I started to play was to sit back for the first half hour or so and not play any hands. I wanted to get a read on the players at my table before investing many of my chips - not knowing my opponents should have cost me the tournament at Zooks last home game and I didn't want to make the same mistake here (surprisingly, I learn from my mistakes). This strategy accomplished 2 things - I did get very good reads on my opponents, but more importantly, it gave me a table image of being a super tight player (I know you're all laughing, but I'm serious - these guys thought I was a rock!! hahaha if only they knew!!). This absolutely worked in my favor for the rest of the night. There were pots that I had absolute garbage and pushed in a raise and 3 guys said "Well he must have pocket aces - I'm folding". The strategy worked out really well.

After about 5 players got knocked out, a guy went all in with pocket 8's preflop and I woke up with Aces in the cutoff. That eliminated him and gave me a sizeable chipstack (and validation of my table image to my opponents ;). After that, I basically folded most every hand - except for a handful of well-timed bluffs (uncalled of course - who wants to go up against aces! :)- and made my way to the final table of 9 players.

When we got to the final table, Toby and Gordo were still alive as well. We played for what seemed like forever before we lost the first player at the final table. Then there were 8. Gordo was dealt pocket aces and got all his chips in against pocket kings, only to watch a K-2-2 flop end his night in 8th place. That was a brutal beat! Had he won that pot, he would have been the chip leader and a major player in the tourney - Tough luck Gordo!

For the next half hour or so, the blinds were getting pretty substantial, and I noticed that Toby and I were becoming targets. Toby is a very tight player, and with my newfound rocky table image, I recognized that I was ripe for other players trying to stealing my blinds. So I started pushing all-in on unraised pots relatively often. Once I pushed with 4-9o, another time with 10-3. Didn't matter - I pushed. And since they think I'm a rock, they all folded. I needed those chips for when they raised my blinds, and I absolutely used my image to my advantage! But Toby, on the other hand, I don't think recognized it. The other players knew that Toby would fold his blinds to a big raise 99 times out of 100, so they were chasing each other to raise the pot when Toby was the big-blind. Somebody would pop a nice raise, and I'd hear other players whispering "I was going to do that if you didn't". Once Toby's blind was raised and he re-raised all in over the top and got the guy to fold, resulting in a nice pot, but that only happened one time. They kept popping his blinds and he kept folding until he eventually got blinded down to where he was super short-stacked and had to call with pocket 4s against AQ (not a particularly bad spot) but lost to an A on the flop. Toby finished in 6th place, which is becoming all too familiar for him - finishing just out the money seemingly every tournament (See Exhibit A, for one example...)

After another kid lost, the remaining 4 of us were in the money. Woohoo!!

Then my luck turned a little cold. I was maybe 2nd in chips and was dealt pocket jacks, so I made a sizeable raise preflop. The chip leader went all-in over the top of me, and I made a big laydown (luckily so, as he showed his pocket aces). Then, having K-9 in the hole, I made a sizeable bet on a A-6-3 board trying to represent an ace, only to have a another guy re-raise all in. Again I folded, and he showed me his pocket 6s (I played it off like I had a big ace and made a great laydown!) Eventually, my chip stack was diminished to where my big blind made me pot committed and I was forced to call a raise from pocket 8s with Q7o. My odds were pretty bad to win, but they were even worse when each of the other two players revealed that they had both also folded Q7o. Needless to say, I didn't catch the lone remaining queen and I was eliminated in 4th place.

I ended up netting 10 dollars for the night, so that's not too bad, but I went home thinking I could have done so much better. I played as good a game of poker tonight as I have played in quite some time. My player reads were spot on all night, and their read on me was 100% wrong. They thought that the hands I won were just a matter of me catching good hands left and right! They had no idea how loose I was really playing. I only showed one bluff all night (and I didn't even have to show it - I bluffed a guy that bluffed me multiple times, so I just had to rub his nose in it like he did to me a few times earlier). Had I not run into such huge hands, I think I could have made it farther into the tourney - maybe even won the thing - but 4th is ok.

I feel bad for Gordo though - I do really think he would have won the whole tournament had his aces held up. But I guess we'll never know. Maybe it's just the poker gods kicking him in the butt for 2 weeks ago...