|
|
Sunday Report
Sunday, April 30, 2006 Terrible. Atrocious. Gross. This was a really bad day of poker, which follows up a pretty bad few weeks of poker. I guess I'm going through one of those bad runs that we all experience at some point or another. It just had been a while for me. I've lost more money in the last few weeks than most people make in a year, and although that doesn't put a dent in my bankroll, it's still pretty annoying, especially considering I also just wrote the government a sizeable check for good old tax day. I won't bore everyone with the details. Let's just say I lost two pots totalling $6,000 with sets (one vs. straight flush draw, one vs. a higher set) in limit cash games, and I had chips in almost every tournament only to see my stack come crashing down every time. Dise was the most fun. Here's the hand history. The opponent and I are both top ten in chips with several hundred players still left. (Note: I am NOT faulting his play, just cursing my luck.) Table "$150,000 21" (MTT) -- Seat 1 is the button Seat 1: brummel2 (3,535 in chips) Seat 2: Jcardshark (8,745 in chips) Seat 3: loopy (1,805 in chips) Seat 4: P/L Trash (4,915 in chips) Seat 5: betdempseys (5,680 in chips) Seat 6: FisherHatGuy (3,220 in chips) Seat 7: jacksup13 (14,745 in chips) Seat 8: the8baller69 (5,405 in chips) Seat 9: rdcrsn (4,910 in chips) Seat 10: OldGoldWolf (20,325 in chips) Jcardshark: Post Small Blind (100) loopy : Post Big Blind (200) Dealing... Dealt to jacksup13 [ Kh ] Dealt to jacksup13 [ Kc ] P/L Trash: Fold betdempseys: Fold FisherHatGuy: Fold jacksup13: Raise (475) the8baller69: Fold rdcrsn : Call (475) OldGoldWolf: Call (475) brummel2: Call (475) Jcardshark: Fold loopy : Call (275) *** FLOP *** : [ Ks Jh As ] loopy : Check jacksup13: Bet (2,250) rdcrsn : Fold OldGoldWolf: Raise (6,000) brummel2: Fold loopy : Fold jacksup13: Raise (12,020) OldGoldWolf: Call (8,270) *** TURN *** : [ Ks Jh As ] [ 5c ] *** RIVER *** : [ Ks Jh As 5c ] [ Qs ] *** SUMMARY *** Pot: 31,015 | Board: [ Ks Jh As 5c Qs ] brummel2 lost 475 (folded) Jcardshark lost 100 (folded) loopy lost 475 (folded) P/L Trash didn't bet (folded) betdempseys didn't bet (folded) FisherHatGuy didn't bet (folded) jacksup13 lost 14,745 (showed hand) [ Kh Kc ] (three of a kind, kings) the8baller69 didn't bet (folded) rdcrsn lost 475 (folded) OldGoldWolf bet 14,745, collected 31,015, net +16,270 (showed hand) [ Ts 9s ] (a flush, ace high) I get all my chips in with his hand as well. That doesn't mean I have to like it. My set holds up and I'm the chip leader by some enormous margin. That's poker. I'll be back on the horse again this week, trying to grind out a living. In times like these, poker is not fun. Here's hoping it's fun again someday. Who We're Rooting For, WPT Championship Saturday, April 22, 2006 Here are some of the players I'm rooting for out of the remaining 71 players in the WPT Championship. Victor Ramdin, 1st place (!!), 1.169 million in chips Cliff Josephy, 44th place, 322,000 Bill Edler, 50th place, 273,000 Carl Olson, 58th place, 208,000 Steven Paul-Ambrose, 67th place, 141,000 Mark Gregorich, 69th place, 124,000 Best of luck all!! Bellagio, Out on Day Two Thursday, April 20, 2006 I never really got it going today. I finally moved my short stack in with 44 on a board of 932 and ran into queens. That's pretty emblematic of how the tournament went. I may not play another big buy-in event until the World Series of Poker. The next few months will be of the grind-it-out-online variety. Of course, there will be plenty of online tournaments I could hit between now and July. Good luck to my friends still in the main event (Gavin Griffin, Carl Olson, I'm looking in your direction). I'll try to list them tomorrow once the Day Three chip counts are up. Juanda Hand Revisited Thursday, April 20, 2006 My day off went by quickly, and I want to rest up for tomorrow, but I also want to quickly discuss the hand where I dusted off 35,000 to John Juanda yesterday. Blinds were 100-200 with a 25 ante. It was the last hand before the third break of the day. I had a stack of 61,000 (man, is that painful to write right about now). I opened UTG for 550 with AsKs. Three folds, and then Juanda reraised to 3,050. He had about 32,000 left after his reraise. It folded back to me. Many players have said, "you probably didn't give him aces when he made such a big reraise." I wish I could use that as an excuse, but unfortunately that's not what happened at all. If an idiot had made that reraise, I would highly discount the possibility of AA or KK. With John Juanda, I thought for sure he would play AA and KK that way. I also thought for sure he would play QQ and AK the same way. The situation boiled down to the question, what percentage of the time would he have something other than QQ-AA, AK in his hand? I'll say briefly that the only plays I would consider in a situation like this are moving in or folding. I hate calling with AK, and I hate reraising to 30% of my opponent's stack even more. I did some math today, and if I make the assumptions that he'll call with KK or AA and fold everything else (by the way, I believe these to be extremely solid assumptions), then I need there to be a 30% chance that Juanda has something other than QQ-AA, AK in his hand. Thinking about it now, I put the chances that John had some weird hand at only about 20%, meaning my jam (and in case you haven't figured it out, I did move all-in) had an EV of about -1,300. Pretty bad, but not atrocious, especially considering how many chips I was sending into the pot. In the long run I was supposed to lose about 4% of my reraising chips, assuming my assumptions about his range are right. But we're not done here. I have the rest of my hands to think about. If I hate making the reraise to 30% of my or my opponent's stack (and I do hate it--it's a play I'm trying to take out of my arsenal all together), then I have to be able to jam with AA there. And I can't ONLY jam with AA there or I'll never get paid. So is the value I lose from my AKs jams made up for by the value I gain from my AA jams? I don't know the answer to that, but I do know there is additional value in having people know they can't just come over the top of my UTG raises. And there's also more value in having a maniac image than a tight image (some might say I deserve the maniac image--and that, of course, is the whole idea). In any event, I don't think my AKs jam was automatic, but I also don't think it was a bad play, and in fact I think it's necessary to make such a play, at least sometimes, to balance out my aggression with AA. (And for those of you who don't believe I would actually play AA this way, come play a tournament with me sometime.) But after doing the EV analysis, I think with Juanda's stack as big as it was, and his reraise as big it was, it certainly would've been OK to fold too. Did I mention that the flop came king-high, and the turn brought a second spade? Anyway, glad I got that out of my system. The real joke is, if I had folded, I'd have been kicking myself all day for not moving in. Wish me luck tomorrow. Day One Status Report Wednesday, April 19, 2006 It was a lousy day. Well, really it was one lousy hand--my AKs vs. John Juanda's AA that cost me T35,000. But, I'm still in the thing with T30,975, which is coincidentally about the same stack size I had after day one two years ago. I'll post a more detailed report sometime during my day off tomorrow. Yes, I'm in Vegas Tuesday, April 18, 2006 I've been here since Thursday. The first few days were strictly a vacation with Ivy, so I haven't been playing much. I did play a couple of one tables over the past two days, with no money to show for them. But I like the way I'm playing, and my confidence is high going into the big one tomorrow (and yes, I do start tomorrow). I ended up taking some backing, and have 70% of myself in this tournament. It's STILL my biggest buy-in of the year. Crazy that this tournament is so much bigger than all the others, although I guess it makes sense, as it is the WPT Championship. I'll post tomorrow night (I hope) with an update. Wish me luck! Congratulations!! Monday, April 10, 2006 To fellow New Yorker Victor Ramdin, who won the inaugural Foxwoods Poker Classic. Victor is a regular at all the stops on tour, and his time in the spotlight is long overdue. Congratulations friend! I'd also like to give a shoutout to second-place finisher Alex Jacob. I don't know Alex personally, but I hear he attends a fine university. Way to represent for the Elis, Alex. As for me, I busted out of three online tournaments today. Fun. I'm heading to the Bellagio on Thursday for the scary big one. As of now, I have 100 percent of myself, but I may change that up before the event starts. Best of luck to everyone who chooses to play poker this week. Foxwoods Non-Report Saturday, April 08, 2006 I took a bad beat and lost a coin flip to bust early from the $3,000 NLHE event. I busted from one super satellite, and bubbled another one where I thought for sure I could fold my way into a seat (I did, however, get my money back in that instance). Then I busted from the main event on day one. On my final hand, I semibluffed all-in into an opponent who I thought probably had an overpair, after the top card paired on board. He took several minutes before calling with his AA, and I missed my outs. Oh well, that's poker. There are now 22 players left. Best of luck to the following friends of mine still in the tournament entering Day Three. Spiro Mitrokostas, 3rd place, 724,000 Victor Ramdin, 4th place, 632,000 Eric Haber, 15th place, 258,000 Hand Results Sunday, April 02, 2006 Before I left for my trip, I asked for thoughts on two hands. The first one came from a super satellite--a bizarre form of poker where your goal is not to get all the chips, but merely to lock up a seat by staving off elimination. As most of my readers know, this is not the way I like to play poker, and I hate super satellites for this reason. That said, I've had pretty good success with them, so I'll continue to play them for the near future. In the hand in question, my opponent moved in for a large overbet, and I had to decide whether to call with AQs. I had the shortest stack, but still more than 30 blinds. (For complete details, see two posts back). The responses for this were interesting in that I got a sizeable number of emails telling me it was an easy fold, and a sizeable number of emails telling me it was an easy call. In my opinion, it is neither an easy fold nor an easy call. It should go without saying that in a real tournament this is an easy call. In this situation, however, it's quite different. Using the Independent Chip Modelling method for estimating tournament chip values, here are some numbers. Chance of getting a seat if I muck: 40.8% Chance of getting a seat if I call and win: 74.9% Equity against opponent's range needed to call: 54.5% Based on the information I had given about my opponent, some of my readers thought I had about 60% equity against his range, making it an easy call. That wasn't my read, however. I didn't have my opponent squarely on AK or better based on his earlier tight play, but I didn't think his range was all that wide either. Using my own estimates for his distribution, I gave myself 52.3% equity against him, making it a fold. Obviously the decision is pretty read-dependent, which in my opinion makes it a very close decision. On balance, I probably should've folded. But I called. He had 77, and I lost. In Hand #2, I opened from mid position with 55, got called by the player to my left, check-raised the 842 two-suited flop, checked the turn, and then my opponent made a very small bet at me. (Again, for full details, go two posts back.) I asked my readers for my next action, as well as comments on my earlier plays. No one had much to say about my preflop or flop actions, but several readers said I should've bet the turn after check-raising the flop. I can't say I agree. I do agree with an email I got from my friend Andrew, who wrote: "I don't know, what are you really hoping he has here, A2 or A4?...I mean, he called the flop checkraise, I sort of assume he has something." Me too, that's why I checked the turn. If I bet, I have to move my opponent all-in, and I don't think I have the best hand, and I don't think my opponent will fold. (I did get some advice to lead out for 10k into the 46k pot, after check-raising to 16k on the flop. To me, all that does is ask my opponent to move-in, and it virtually never gets him to fold.) But when he decided to make this microbet of 10k into a 46k pot, I was no longer convinced. I checked intending to check-fold, but I got new information that my hand might be good. So I set my opponent all-in. The strange ending was that he called for all his chips with KcQc (he picked up a flush draw on the turn--not sure how he called the check-raise on the flop) and I won. Tomorrow I'm playing the Dise Masters event ($200 rebuys), and the usual Stars and Party events. Monday it's off to Foxwoods. Good luck to my readers in whatever poker you're playing.  September 2004 | October 2004 | December 2004 | January 2005 | February 2005 | March 2005 | April 2005 | May 2005 | June 2005 | July 2005 | August 2005 | September 2005 | October 2005 | November 2005 | December 2005 | January 2006 | February 2006 | March 2006 | April 2006 | May 2006 | June 2006 | July 2006 | August 2006 | September 2006 | October 2006 | December 2006 | January 2007 | April 2007 | May 2007 | June 2007 | July 2007 | October 2007 | January 2008 | |
Poll
|
Copyright
© 2004-2006 by Matt Matros | All Rights Reserved |
