Saturday's Deep Stack poker tournament at G-Spot was problematic for me for a number of reasons, although I finished far higher than I did in the last tournament (15th place this time -- which was a little better than middle-of-the-pack -- versus an early bust-out with KK in the first one). Lance, as expected, made final table; I donated some substantial chips to that worthy cause.
The first problem I had with the tournament was that I've only been playing live games for a month or two now and I'm, embarrassingly, not used to the chip denominations yet. So, because this was a deep stack tournament, we had some rather large chip denominations. I'll admit that, at the beginning of said tournament, I couldn't tell a green chip amount from a yellow chip amount. It's a wonder I didn't lose more early on since, for the first 20 or so hands, I don't think I even knew how many chips I actually had, much less what the other players had!
I got lucky and took down a huge pot in the first or second hand of the tournament, giving me the 1st bust out and a chance to double up. At that point, I was the chip leader by a ton and I should have just tightened up. But, I hit an A-K, raised pre-flop (correct move and amount), and couldn't fold it when the flop came down 4-9-Q and my continuation bet against one other player (Amber) got check-raised. That was the point I should have folded, but I simply didn't believe her and made a bad call. I at least had the common sense to get out on the turn, but not before it cost me about 10,000 in chips, or 1/3 of my stack.
I then moved tables and ended up two seats down from Lance. Luckily I was to his left and not the other way around, although I still donated a lot to him with some middle pairs against his higher pairs. Could have been worse, but those calls cost me about another 10,000. I got a small amount back off of a suck-out against a better, more conservative player, but was still getting short stacked.
By the time I moved to the final two tables, I was down to 12,000 and the bb was up to 1,000. It was time to push all in, which I should have, but I had a horrific string of cards. I eventually had to push in on K-9 offsuit and, up against, AK and QQ, busted out of the tournament.
Lessons learned:
-- If you're the chip leader, don't get into a pissing match for a huge stack when all you have to back it up is an uneducated hunch.
-- Don't call a substantial raise from Lance if you're in middle position and all you have to back it up with is a middle pair.
-- Skip the tournament and just play the follow-up cash game. Here's why:
Lance spotted me $200 and I bought into the $1/$2 table. At the time, the table was full. I sat down next to Dave Lewis, who's like a combination of the Unibomber and a military man. He had an enormous chip stack of at least a few thousand. Also at the table were a couple of players I knew to be good, one gentleman who was obviously on tilt, and a weaker player who was nice but donating rapidly.
I flopped a set on one hand and took down a pot of around $150. I immediately pulled aside $200 to give back to Lance. I also started to realize that Dave Lewis and one of the asian players would tend to make bad decisions when playing one another because they had some kind of silly "my penis is bigger than yours" rivalry going on. I used this to my advantage and avoided their pots until I had a really good hand (in this case, I flopped the ace-high nut flush). I checked and let Dave do his thing. I called. The asian called. Down came some cards that luckily helped both Dave and the asian, but that didn't at all threaten my chances of winning. I checked, Dave bet, I called, the asian called and the river came down. At this point I knew I'd won the pot. Dave bet the river, I raised by a hundred into the pot of a couple hundred. The asian smartly folded. Dave called. I took the pot which ended up being at least a few hundred dollars.
I took a few small pots here and there after that but mostly tightened up and didn't play any cards that would have been risky. I also set aside an addition $210 in chips to cover my tournament buy-in loss. At that point, I knew I had a few hundred leftover in profit for the day but since most of it was in $5 chips and I didn't bother to count those, I had no idea that the day had been as profitable as it had been. The final chip count when I cashed out was $901.
It's taken me this long to post an entry for a couple of reasons: 1) I had a hard time being truly, honestly excited about the cash win because I realize that I made some major, major errors in the tourament prior; 2) I was too busy playing other tournaments on Bodog; and 3) Lance is a grammar nazi.
Have at it, handsome. I'm only a diet mountain dew into the morning, so this one should be easy pickings.
No comments:
Post a Comment