Friday, December 31, 2010

Bob Battersby does his civic duty

I was intending my last blog of the year to be a review of the year (still under construction) but I ended up getting a bit of a result in my last live outing of the year, the Fitz EOM, so I figure that's worth blogging.

The cliff notes I guess are started bad but then played optimal push/fold and flipped well. Drifted down to 6K in the early going before I got it all in with kings on an 8 high flop against an even shorter stacked Barry Donovan. I was 99% certain my hand was good at this point given the way the preflop and flop betting went, I thought Barry's range was virtually all draws. As it was his monster draw (flush and double belly buster) was actually favourite over my hand but my good pal Albert Kenny on dealing duty came through and managed to root two safe cards for me out of the deck for turn and river. I then bounced up and down a bit thanks to a combination of winning and losing against some short stack shoves until I shipped J8o in the sb into Tom Kitt's A7 in the BB and spiked a jack. You know you're running good when you win one of those against Kitty and it was the first of a few Dokings on the night. The most memorable Doking was against the legend that is Bob Battersby. One minute we were chatting amicably about online poker and he was telling me he only plays cash online now and is up 40K this year on William Hill, next minute I was shoving 63s from the sb into his very short stack in the BB just after the bubble. For an old guy his chips didn't half get in fast as he had ace 9 but of course an upside down nine popped out to send him reluctantly and noisily to the rail. He hung around for the rest of the tournament pointing me out to any new punters who might not be aware what an utter donkey I am. Very civic of Bob as I don't play often enough in the Fitz these days for all the regulars to realise the true depths of my donkery.

I started to get short relative to the blinds when I found a perfect reship spot. Paddy Hicks opened in mid position and AT looked plenty good enough in the SB to send my 20 bigs into the middle. Paddy more or less snapped with A3o and I held. Afterwards the other Fitz regs expressed surprise that my AT was ahead. How does Paddy still get away with it? He's been robbing their blinds and antes since 1953 with rag aces, face rags, suited conns and all sorts of spanners and still when he raises in there for the 100th time that night, guys are folding decent aces and pairs behind.

Near the bubble I played one hand which I probably would have played a lot differently earlier in the year. Utg opens for 3x (range 88+, AJ+ I think: he was limp calling with smaller pairs) and I find KK just behind. Any raise commits me against all the relevant stacks and with tons of trigger happy reshippers behind I elected to flat for a number of reasons, mainly hoping to induce a squeeze. Everyone else folds, the flop is A72r, and utg unexpectedly open ships. My first reaction is that can't really an ace can it now, why would he ship to fold out everything worse? There's no hand I can have he beats that has more than 3 outs so he doesn't need to protect his hand. So I call obviously. But then I thought hang on a second here, this is live, weird shit goes down all the time. Is he really banging it in with nines or tens hoping to gets jacks plus to fold? Or is he thinking oh look, there's my ace, bang it in. One of the biggest mistakes I see players both good and bad making is to think that other players think and play the same way you do when quite patently they don't. Just because I wouldn't think overbet shipping an ace would be the way to go here doesn't mean he wouldn't. I also remembered a conversation I had with James Browning in Galway recently where he talked about physical reads and the extra edge they give you live (at the time I remember thinking I've stopped paying as much attention to them as I used to, probably to my detriment). So I looked at this guy and my gut said he wasn't bricking it at the prospect of a call. So I folded, showing him the kings to try to get him to show, which he did (AQ). Soul reads ftw.

A little while later I picked up my only other real hand of the game, aces. I opened for my std not much more than a min raise and the BB tank banged it all in with QT. Flop was a rather sweaty KJx but I held. This got me out past 20 bbs for the first time and I felt good about pressing on until I came a cropper against Jay Renehan blind on blind. I raised AKs in the SB and Jay jammed over my cbet on a 7 high flop. I was getting almost 2 to 1 on the call so it wouldn't be the worst call ever. I had a runner runner flush and a runner runner straight so if I think my two overs are both live and good I'm priced in to call, and Jay can have drawy air here too, he certainly banging it in here with 2 overs and a flush draw. What tipped me towards the fold was it was pretty much all of my stack, I was under no immediate pressure to gamble, and there were likely to be much better spots.

On the final table I claimed a few more short stack scalps. Three handed Jay's son had half the chips, and me and the other guy were about the same. I got crippled blind on blind getting it in with fives v nines, but after a treble up I was threatening to get back into it when I get in with AKs against the same guy's ace ten, but the flop sucked: Atx. Can't really complain though as I ran really well to get that far. I was also extremely happy with my performance: as I said before I think my live game dipped a bit this year at times in comparison to my online game. It became too easy to write tournaments off thinking "ah sure I make more in an average week online than I'd get for winning this yoke" but you should never be going into any game giving less than your very best. Early on in my career Nicky Power joked that if I went two or three tournaments without a cash I thought I was running bad and didn't know what was happening, and it's true I've basically never had a sustained bad run live to date and I do genuinely feel that live the edge of the better players is so humongous that you can sustain itm ratios and ROIs that would be impossible online. John Eames said to me once good players should be cashing 35-40% of the time live and I think he's probably right.

Basically after a few lacklustre live performances I hauled myself into the front office, sat myself down, and gave myself a serious talking to about how you have to try to give every live outing 100% and you shouldn't be turning up if you're not going to. I've put a lot of thought into the differences between live and online, and what they mean for how you should play live. After that kick up the behind, I think I'm back to where I'm at least as good a live player as I am online.

One experiment I tried in this tournament tried to capitalise on the fact that I seem to find it easier to click into the zone online. When I looked at my hole cards, I immediately visualized them as they'd appear on my screen at home, and visualized the tables and players similarly as their on screen equivalents. And yes, before anyone says it, I'm quite aware of the fact that I'm a nutter :)

Friday, December 24, 2010

Ship the Christmas turkey

Not really sure what this blog entry's going to be about as I've feck all to say. But when did that ever stop me?

The last few weeks have been basically been all about the grind (online). After a few days of running bad after Galway (maybe a bit of playing bad too: it's hard to refocus after a live crossbar/disappointment) I went on a miniheater where winning a few of the tourneys I grind every evening/night became the norm. Turns out though that upswings are as boring to talk about as downswings so I'll spare you the detailed brags (that's what Twitter and Facebook are for imo). Highlights: won the 30r on Ipoker a few times, shipped an EMOPS Gran Canaries package, and followed up a second in a 22r on Stars with a win the next night.

I don't play all that much on Stars for a number of reasons. Part of it is just following sensible game selection: most of the top MTTers in the world play on Stars and the general consensus is other networks are softer. However, OPR has my ROI on Stars at 112% over a decent sample (>1k) so maybe I should play there more. Only reason I started playing a few a night is the tourneys on Cake are dying so I had a few free slots on the night shift. Stars tourneys play very differently late on: the regs are much more aggro preflop and if you can't mix it in the 4/5/6 betting wars you're basically dead. On some of the other networks there's almost nobody else 4 plus betting light. The bet sizing is much better too: guys getting more bets out of their stacks even with 30 bbs. Like the standard on other networks is I open for 2x and the 30 bbs just ship in. If I have it, ship the 60 bbs pot, thank you very much. If not, I've lost a paltry 2 bbs. On Stars, it's more likely to go 2x, 3.6x, then I either fold or 7.5x.

Also well done to Aussie James McBeth who succeeded where others I won't mention(cough, blaaaaaaah, cough) came up short: beating me headsup on Bruce in the Doke challenge. Well done James and I hope you run as good as I normally do on Bruce.

As the year winds down, it's time to reflect on the year that's been to see what mistakes can be learned from, and plan for the year ahead. I'll do a proper full review in the next entry but in broad strokes here's what I think I did well this year:

(1) Work ethic. I basically grinded my ass off this year online, played about 7000 online mtts, and rebuilt a healthy bankroll more or less from scratch
(2) Game selection. I'm not someone who feels the need to play all the "big games" for pure ego reasons, I see poker as a means to an end, primarily to provide for me and my family. Even if I think I can beat a $100 rb by, say, $10 on average, I'd prefer to play a $40 game I can beat by $20. There's a very good piece at the Hendon mob that pretty much nails my attitude here
(3) Focus. My biggest mistake this year was getting sucked into destructive stuff away from the tables that distracted (more on this later). However, for the most part I managed to put it all out of my mind when I was playing and just get on with the job
(4) Game. I think I've improved quite a bit as a player. Mainly in terms of versatility. Before this year, my only real strength was slow structured deep stack games and sit n gos online. 2010 was the year I adjusted to playing well in fast structures, turbos, big ante games, short stacked games etc.

Here's what I got wrong:
(1) Non core activities. This basically means getting sucked into stuff that is poker related but ultimately not helpful. At times I lost sight of the fact that I'm a poker player first and foremost and that's where my income comes from.
(2) For a lot of the year, I didn't play my A game live. I was doing so well online I start believing I just had to play the same game live, but live is different
(3) I listened too much to some people, and not enough to others. Someone said to me early in the year I need to choose my friends better, and I learned the harsh truth of this statement during the year. I think maybe the biggest mistake in poker is to believe everyone thinks and plays the same way you do. The second biggest is to try to play like someone else. Even if that person is a winning player, you'll never play their game as well as they do. You have to forge your own. As far as friends go, it's important to have people you can trust not go to pieces and blow up in public at the first sign of stress, that will offer and accept constructive criticism rather than destructive sniping, that won't smile to your face and go around spreading lies about you behind your back, and who have proper respect for themselves and other people. We're all poker players second, human beings first

Anyway, bottom line is 2010 was a very good year and I'm optimistic that 2011 will be even better. I've improved a lot as a player and continue to learn new stuff with the help of the good people around me.

I'll sign off with a shout out to one of my favourite poker players and human beings, Sligo's finest Feargal "MidniteKowby" Nealon. I don't usually plug other people's blogs here but his latest epic is an absolute must read and see. Feargal's asked for my advice as he developed his blog and it's turning into something truly awesome in my opinion that reflects not just the fact that he plays poker well but also he's got more to him as a person than that. Also, fair play for naming and shaming a certain alround gobshite. I know a few alround gobshites in poker myself: maybe I'll take a leaf out of Feargal's book and start naming names in 2011 :)

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Thirteenths are the new first (maybe not)

I think my development as a poker player is probably fairly typical. When I started, I kept it very simple, and just played hands and spots which I recognised as very favourable. Like most inexperienced players, I was likely to make big mistakes post flop, so tight preflop play seemed the best way to avoid tricky postflop spots. When faced with a tricky postflop decision, my default strategy was when in doubt fold. This very basic approach served me well in Ireland where most recreational players equate tight with weak, and most live tourney structures are so slow you can camp out for the nuts and let some maniac bluff his stack off at you. At the time my main online game was stts where this approach is also profitable.

As I started to play outside Ireland it quickly became apparent that I needed to rethink my approach. The better more observant players you encounter in the bigger games abroad simply won't pay you off if you sit and wait for the nuts. This approach also doesn't work so well in online mtts with their faster structures and better regs who quickly gut the fish before you have the chance to flop a big hand.

As I gained experience my post flop play improved to the point where I could play a lot more hands profitably, and recognise more favourable spots. My results online and abroad improved, but not at home in Ireland. When I switched from stts to mtts online, I adjusted very quickly and opened up my game a lot with very successful results. So successful that I started to think I should play the exact same way live. Yet if anything my results deteriorated slightly.

In the last few weeks I spent a lot of my downtime thinking about this. I came to a number of conclusions:
(1) Recognising more plus Ev spots meant I was taking on more marginal spots. From the beginning, I've believed it is correct in certain situations to pass up slightly plus Ev spots if it's for a considerable amount of your stack and losing means not being able to avail of even more favourable spots likely to arise. In a fast structured online mtt, I think you pretty much have to take every plus Ev spot no matter how marginal as the structure doesn't guarantee enough big plus Ev spots, but live is different
(2) A tight image in Ireland does not curtail your action on your big hands because there's usually at least one guy at the table who thinks tight means you'll always fold anything but the nuts to a big bet
(3) It's better to make a bad fold than a bad call. In the beginning I probably folded way too much, and this had switched around to calling too much. I'm better at assessing the probability of being up against a bluff these days, but if I think it's 50/50 and I'm getting pot odds of evens on the call, I used to always call. Now I'm thinking it might be better as a general policy to always fold when it's close

With this in mind, I approached my IPC campaign determined to play a style somewhere between my old nitty one and my normal online hyperlag game.

Nice plan in theory, and the first try out lasted about 10 minutes. When I got to Galway I found the main event had been postponed for a day. Poker Stars very generously put on a 10K freeroll by way of compensation. A few minutes in, I'm in the small blind, Paul Leckey is in the big blind, except he isn't (he's away from the table). Folded to the button, a very good young English LAG who knocked me out of the Dublin UKIPT main event, who mins to 200. I find queens in the small blind and reraise to 650. He looks at me quizically before making it 1550. I now believe he has a hand: the initial min open looks like it wanted to encourage a doubting Thomas move from me with the BB away. Hoping he has jacks or tens I make it 4500. He tanks and then asks a question that I know as soon as I hear it that if I answer truthfully almost guarantees the rest of the chips go in: "Are you SlowDoke?".

After I confirm that that is indeed my Stars screen name, he shoves and I'm looking at his ace queen. I hold til the river when the ace pops out. He apologises profusely and confirms that the hand would have played very differently if the BB wasn't away, he didn't know who I was, and he hadn't recently sharkscoped me to discover I had, in his words, a sick ROI in mtts on Stars. Which was very nice of him as it at least left me feeling good as I walked away from the table.

The other upside of the early exit was I was able to play the last chance supersat that night. After a good start, I ran queens on the button into kings in the blinds, leaving me with just over one big blind. I never understand why people feel the need to get the rest in very next hand in those spots, so I folded a bunch of 7 highs until Jason Herbert opened utg, I found a pair of threes just behind, plenty to be getting on with, especially against someone as loose as Jason. He had T9s which as I remarked to James Browning in the next seat is behind but favourite (James didn't seem to believe me and ran an immediate pokerstove to confirm it). In any case my threes stayed ahead. I won a few more 50/50s, all against Jason, before the hand that got me right back into it. Folded to me in cutoff, I found Q8s, good enough to shove there. James Browning called on the button for a bit less, and big Iain called in the big blind. When the cards went over I was in much better shape than I expected. Iain had AK (37%), James 55 (31%) so I basically had a 32% chance to triple up. The flop was very encouraging: 8 high with two of my suit, and the turn and river did nothing silly so I got the triple up. From there I jogged up and down til the tickets were handed out. As I'd already qualified online (twice), I got the cash instead so was now on a total freeroll.

My main event got off to a rather surreal start as I found myself at a table of young bucks including Shaun Craig who had all qualified online. This turned out not to be a coincidence: two levels in it was announced that the random draw had been botched and wasn't random so there would be a full redraw at the break. I escaped from the table with a little less than starting stack to find myself at a new table with Paul Leckey, Eoin Olin, Noel Clarke, Rory McIlroy lookalike Cory Dean Desmond and Dan Rankin. My immediate fortunes didn't improve and before I knew what was happening I was down to 9K and having to survive a race with jacks against Noel's AQ. It was quite a shock to win one of these. I couldn't afford to be complacent though as the blinds continued to escalate and had 20 bigs when I opened AQ utg. I opened for 2.5x rather than my usual 2.1x as I'd decided I was going with the hand. Or at least I thought I had, until Dan Rankin reraised me in mid position. Dan's a good friend who knows my game very well, so my first reaction was he pretty much knows I'm almost never raise folding with 20 bbs. Dan's also too good to be overplaying anything that AQ beats or even much it's racing against, so his reraising range in this spot crushes me. So after a bit of a think, I went against my normal policy and folded the AQ. I showed hoping it would get Dan to show too (he was wisely sticking to the policy of showing nothing). After thinking about it for a second, Dan did show me kings, which was very nice of the kid.

I got through to day 2 just shy of 40K, and got off to a great start in the first 20 minutes flying up to 120k. Just as well as I went 3 or 4 hours without winning another pot. As my stack started to get critical again, I opened AKs utg, and a Canadian guy with only slightly less than me shoved in from the small blind with KJ. The first card I saw on the flop was a jack and my heart sunk until I saw it was surrounded by a queen and a ten. I then played a big pot with a local kid who was later involved in one of the funniest pots I've ever seen in my life on the TV table. This kid was hyperactive. Every time someone new came to the table he greeted them with "Are you a pro?". If you said you were, he took this as a signal that he had to play every hand you were in. By now there were quite a few self confessed pros at the table so that was a lot of hands. Anyway, I pick up a proper hand (queens) and sure enough when I open he flats just behind. Flop comes a rather welcome Q72, I lead for 75% of pot, and he flats. Every other hand we've played so far has followed the same script: I cbet, he calls, I check the turn, he bets, so I decide this is how this hand will play too. Turn's a 4, and I check call. River's a 7, which opens up the rather juicy possibility that he now has trips and will think he's good. He may also have total air but since he'd see me as weak tight based on previous history he might also decide to rep the 7. I lead out for 75% of pot again (there's too much danger he checks a marginal hand behind if I check), he instamins me, I ship for not much more, and he folds.

With 3 tables left, I got moved to a new table straight in on the big blind. I'd taken a few hits and was now back down to 60k, 12 big blinds. I sat down hoping not to have any big marginal decisions before I got to know the table, but as I was thinking that the small blind shipped in on me. I looked down at A4s, a clear call if he's shoving optimally or wider. Since he was a young foreign kid and obviously an Internet qualifier, I assumed he was and called. He had K2s (same suit) and I held.

Shortly afterwards we became the TV table. Early on I got another much needed double up. Maurice Silke opened in late position, I found ace ten on the button and since I don't buy into the popular view that Maurice is an older rock version of Martin (I actually said to Martin on the rail that his old man is wilder than he is: he was getting away with murder as the younger players were falling into the old guy old rock misconception), I know I'm ahead of his range so I reshipped my 20 bigs. He called with KQ and I held. Then the funny one. Folded to the kid who'd near doubled up my queens earlier, and he was showing all the signs of someone who wanted to impress on TV. He opened for 20k (4x), and eventual winner Nick Abou Risk three bet to 65k in the big blind. He was playing a lot of chips with the kid, I think they were probably number one and two at that point with about 600K and 400K respectively, but this was his first actual three bet. That didn't faze the kid though who immediately shovelled all in. When Nick snapped and flicked over kings, the blood seemed to drain from the kid's face and he looked anxiously at his cards. It seemed like he'd managed to get the loot in blind: I'm pretty sure he hadn't looked at his cards yet. He peeled them anxiously clearly hoping for one ace at least, shouted "ah fuck!" when it didn't materialise, turned over Q8o, and a few seconds later was heading to the rail with a bad beat story for the TV crew.




I maintained my stack between 200K and 250K thanks mainly to some timely reships until we were down to 2 tables. At that point we switched and the other table became the TV table, but I still had the same problem of being seated to the immediate right of the massive chipleader who in his own words liked to play a lot of pots. So while the reship continued to work well, the light open was a clear losing play. As often happens in these situations, you can lose half your stack doing nothing. A few rounds of card death and no good spots and I'd shrunk back down to just over 10 bigs. By now we were 6 handed, the blinds were about to hit me and also about to increase, so ace 6 suited utg seemed like plenty to be getting in with. Unfortunately I ran into AJ, the flop came jack high, and I was shaking hands with people before the river. No regrets though, right move at the wrong time, and I'd run pretty well up to that point in terms of flips, holding when I got it in good, and not running into hands when I reshipped.

That said, at the time I was pretty devastated not to have at least made the final table. Second last table exits are the worst. I at least had an interest in the final table in the form of Piggy (Dan Rankin). Dan's great run eventually ended with 6 left, but it was a tremendous performance from a great kid who has all the talent and attitude needed to go to the top in the game. First of many for Dan hopefully: he turns 21 this weekend. Also well done to everyone else who cashed, especially Dave Brady (another up and coming youngster I rate very highly) and the winner Nick. Nick's now got a very sick Hendon Mob, three results, all wins, which looks a lot more balla than mine with its preponderance of 13ths.

The atmosphere in Galway was unusually muted although I personally was very happy at the encouragement and support I got from the rail from old friends and new ones like Shaun Craig and Jono Crute. I was also getting a lot of texts from absent friends, largely because the PokerStars blog updates were so bad nobody knew what was happening. There seemed to be long gaps without any reports, and the reports focused on foreign players of less interest to most people reading the blog than local favourites. The organisers and Stars really should think about hiring locals so they don't have this deficit. As I've noted before, Danny Maxwell and the rest of the IPB bloggers have done a brilliant job on a shoestring budget at several recent events here in Ireland and it makes sense to hire them for the Irish legs. Not to get too parochial about it but it stands to reason that the main audience for an Irish leg will be Irish players, and their main interest is in the top Irish players they play with regularly. Big Iain did a number of great shows for Irish Poker Radio which again underlines the benefit of local knowledge.

On the plus side, I can confirm that while everyone else is feeling the pinch of the Celtic Tiger hangover, the Northern rock that is Mick McCluskey is taking the very uncharacteristic line of splashing around like it's 1999. He bought me not one but two drinks over the weekend, and there were wild stories of him buying drinks for others in the hotel too. It was also good to get another deepish run, and leave Galway with more cash than I arrived with, even if I've done most of it online since :)

On Monday morning I had breakfast with Paul Marrow who very kindly offered me a lift back to Dublin. Parky was in the car too providing the entertainment, so there was good craic and stories.

I think that's probably it for me live in 2010: plan for December is to grind my way out of my online downswing and recharge for a major live assault in early 2011.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Two weeks since my last confession...

Well, as Paul Quinn pointed out to me in the Fitz the other night, it's been over two weeks since my last confession so I'm due.

The sullen silence on the blogging front can mainly be put down to "you only blog when you're winning" syndrome I guess. For most of that time I've been struggling with the rare (for me online this year) experience of running really bad. After a couple of decent wins two weekends ago after the Cavan Open, I went into a 10K or so downswing. To be fair it was bound to happen at some stage the way I've been running this year, but knowing that doesn't make it any more pleasant when it does. This is one of the few jobs where you can work really hard, do everything right, and still have considerably less money at the end of the week than if you'd stayed in bed watching daytime soaps and reality rubbish.

Downswings are an inevitable part of the game though, and everyone has their own way of dealing with them whether it's an enforced break, a peeved rant or sullen silence. I just try to get on with it, keep doing what I normally do, focus on the process and each individual decision rather than the result. Downswings are much better learning experiences than upswings too: when you're running well it's just all too easy to just chug along not questioning what you're doing or looking for leaks. My situation is slightly different from the young Internet bucks doing this in that I'm surrounded by loved ones who depend on me. The last thing they need is me taking out my frustrations at repeated runner runnerings on them, or even to be told that Daddy/hubby dropped 5 figures online in the last few days. So yeah, downswings
(a) are inevitable
(b) must be dealt with as professionally as possible. There's no difference between less money lost in a downswing and more money won in an upswing at the end of the year
(c) make for a pretty dull conversation topic so the rest of this blog is going to focus on something else

My default approach to not just downswings but poker in general tends towards the sullen silence end of the spectrum. There's a couple of reasons for this: my basic attitude to the game is to take it on a decision by decision basis and I find it easier to do this if I'm not distracted. I also think total silence makes for a more intimidating table presence that suits my game better: it seems to discourage people from playing back or trying anything too fruity that complicates your life with trickier high variance decisions. However, I thrive at tables where for some reason most of the table are tilted and therefore doing all sorts of wacky stuff. My favourite kind of table is one where there's a Mark Dalimore/Dave Masters/Keith McFadden type acting as agent provocateur and I can sit back, maintain my discipline and react to how far people are diverging from optimal play because they're on monkey tilt. This begs the question should I not try to perform this function myself? Keith suggested to me once that I should use speechplay more as an information gathering tool (something he's a master of).

The reason for this ramble is the most interesting hand I played live in the last few weeks pivoted on speechplay, and I also used it successfully online in the last tourney I won two weekends ago before my downswing.

The hand was from the Cavan Open. After cruising through most of day 1 and getting up to 60K, I undid most of the good work with an ill timed moved that cost me half my stack. After raising pre with 55 and getting one call behind and two in the blinds, the flop came down 678r. Checked to the caller behind who fired in 5500 (pot was 5K). After the two blinds folded, I have a choice between folding (which I'd normally do) or shoving. The shove looked appealing for a number of reasons: I know I don't have the best hand but since he only had 20K behind I'm basically shoving 25K to win 10500 if he folds, and should have 8-10 outs even if called. So I think I have 32-40% equity in a 55k pot if called, worth 16-22K, so he doesn't need to fold very often for shoving 25K to win 10500 to be plus Ev. I also thought there was a decent chance he would fold as he could be protecting a fairly marginal one pair hand (all the ace rags were in his range). Also, after spewing most of his stack by playing too loose in the early going, he'd buckled down, tightened up and had just doubled up previous hand when he won a race. So psychologically I thought there was a better chance he'd fold rather than risk his entire tournament with A8/A7 or whatever. The fact that he took a little while to call rather than snapping (he had top set) suggests the read was right but the timing was wrong. None of my 8 outs materialised and I was left to rue the fact that while I rarely make these big moves live for a lot of my stack, on the few occasions I do they almost never seem to work out, which of course discourages me from making them more often.

Anyway, that's not the hand I wanted to talk about, it's just taking me a while to get there in my usual perambulatory fashion. The next day, I got back up to 60K in the early going, then bobbed up and down between 40 and 60k for a few hours of card death when the hand arose. Folded to me in the cutoff with blinds 800/1600/100, I opened for my standard smallball raise of 3300. A very good solid young player playing about 30K tanked for a while on the button and eventually called. An older guy then shoved in from the SB for 35K, and it's back to me. Here's what I was thinking:
(1) This is a marginal one. AK is a no brain reship, and AJ generally gets folded here without too much thought.
(2) With AQ I'm not even ahead of the button's range (he was very tight solid) and I'm only ahead of the shover if he's essentially bluffing. And even then we're probably talking 58/42 ahead rather than 70/30.
(3) The hand I'm mainly worried about is AK. I don't think the flatter ever has AK but the shover may have.
(4) Folding is the safe option but with the tournament speeding up I couldn't keep raise folding for very long or dodging races. AQ is near the top of my range so if I always fold it to a shove I'm very exploitable (it would be profitable for any 20 BB stack to shove any two every time I raise).
(5) Reshoving is ok if I have 45% equity against the shover's range and the flatter folds.

I pondered the numbers in (4) for a while and eventually did reshove. I thought the flatter's most likely holding was a medium pair he wouldn't feel happy committing with in a three way pot for all his chips, and I thought there was a good to decent chance the shover was on a move. For one thing I try not to make the mistake Mick McCluskey is always telling me the young guns make against him (assuming anyone over the age of 30 can't recognise a good spot to squeeze). The guy seemed sufficiently clued in to be capable of turning up with ace rag or KQ here. What really tipped it though was some speechplay from the last hand we'd played. I'd raised from the hijack, he defended his BB, and after check folding the flop he remarked "you like to play small pots, don't you?". My response was "Yeah, the big ones are too risky". I took two things from this. My opponent was an aware thinking player who had correctly categorised me as a small ball player by preference. And my response made it a lot more likely he was going to look to exploit my apparent reluctance to commit a lot of chips without a very big hand.

He had JTo, I held, and from there I motored up to 200K, near enough to chipleader. I then lost a bunch of races/coolers which I'll spare you the long dull description. Great tournament though and Mick McGuane deserves a lot of credit for the games he runs and his new club (the Side Pot in Cavan town).

My second tale of speechplay comes from the online tourney I won the next day just before my downswing started. It was on Bodog, where I generally do the night shift as that's when they have their bigger buyin games and you have the sports bettors chasing losses. A lot of poker players think they're better at sports betting than they are, and the reverse is certainly true. When the final table formed, it was the usual mix of regulars (pros) who also grind those games and that particular night's few lucky randomers running like God. I had a medium stack for most of it that was tricky to play as if I busted before the clinging short stackers or the randomers just waiting to blow up I lost a fair bit of equity, but if I sat too tight I'd surrender most of my chance of winning. By the time we got 4 handed the situation was clearer, I had a reshipping stack (20 big blinds), and was the shortest of the four stacks so this was no longer a time for sitting back. I pick up 33 in the BB, it's folded to the SB who is the one remaining randomer, he makes a donkish looking raise to 4 BBs, and in my mind this is a totally standard shove now. My hand is to strong to fold headsup, and calling is unpalatable. Most of the time I'll be looking at three overcards on the flop while deciding whether to call for the rest of my chips. Anyway, I shoved, and he used almost his full timebank before calling with KQs. Amusingly enough, the flop came 33x. Cue the chatbox monkey tilt.

"You ***** piece of ***** ****. How could you **** shove **** threes? Not like I've been **** raising your **** blind every **** time".

I normally pay no heed to the chatbox. I used to see it just as a good way to quickly spot the fish (they're the ones talking about outs and pot odds in the chatbox and complaining about beats and donks) But these days I can spot them a lot more quickly just from their general play, and anyway, when you're playing 8 or more tables, who has time to even read the chatbox? However, this was my last tourney of the night so I was paying attention, and decided to experiment a bit.

"I was ahead. Bad call by you imo"

After a bit of toing and froing over the merits of the call (obviously it's standard: I was on the windup here), he seemed to think he might actually be in the wrong so he changed tack.

"Keep those min raises coming out of position, donk"

This one surprised me. The min raise open is more or less my trademark but out of position? It turned out he thought an utg raise raise 4 handed was "out of position". He tried to argue that out of position meant first to act preflop. Eventually he appealed for support to the other reg (we were three handed by now).

"Under the gun is out of position, right Alienface?".

The reg maintained a stony silence but he kept pressing and eventually got a response.

"Under the gun is under the gun".

By now, the tilt monkey had tilt spewed most of his stack off and after I put him out of our misery, he hung around to verbally support the other guy in the chatbox. Which somehow made the win all the sweeter.

Then I ran bad for 10 days. Evidence for poker karma?

Anyway, I'm finishing this blog up in my hotel room Galway. The start of the IPC/UKIPT has been postponed until tomorrow but there's a 10K freeroll to look forward to in a couple of hours. Now that I've made my confession, I expect the run good to start again. Plan for December (aside from winning this) is to concentrate on online. I was originally intending on hitting Normandy for the next FPS and Prague for the EPT but now I'm looking at either Deauville EPT or PCA as my next major live outing.

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