In every poker tournament there is usually "one hand" that defines your fate, good or bad. The good hand can be getting someone to commit themselves to TPTK when you flopped a set, or when you totally misread your opponent but go runner, runner for the suckout. If it is the bad hand it doesn't have to be the bustout hand and it doesn't have to necessarily be a bad beat, just a hand that eventually lead to your demise.
Yesterday in the FTP 100 WSOP ME, I got off to a good start. I flopped a set within the first 5 hands and played it to perfection with a hyper aggressive player who bet enough to pot commit himself but somehow managed to laydown an allin check raise by me on the turn with the pot laying him 4:1.
I also flopped a boat but couldn't get the same hypo to bite, and got several mid to big pairs. The first hour was pretty good and I was in the top 25% of chip leaders.
Sometime during the second hour my table broke and I was moved to a different table with one of the chipleaders. The average chipstack was may 4.5K this person had almost 30K and was on my left three people away. This guy was limp/calling every hand, calling any bets on the flop and betting enough to put the person all in on the turn. So needless to say I was not getting to see many flops but was still in top 50% of chips. It was about 15 minutes till the 2nd break when the "one hand" that defined my tournament played out. I was in the SB with a 4h6h and $6K in chips, the Monster Stack decided that he would not play in MP and 4 people limped I called and we saw a flop five handed. The flop was 4s8d6d, now I have bottom 2 and I am first to act. With all the possible draws there is no need to get cute, I over bet the pot $1200 into $1000 pot and get smooth called in 2 places. The turn was the ugliest card I could have ever seen.
I am not going to go broke with 2 pair when both a flush draw and straight draw just completed. I have no choice but to check fold and watch 1/3 of my chips get shipped. I didn't tilt necessarily, but I just somehow felt that this was an omen. The next hand I pick up an AJ on the button, I make a 3x raise not realizing "Monster Stack" had limped UTG, he calls and we see XXX flop rainbow and Monster checks, what do you do? Now I have $4.5K which is avg, there is $4K in the pot, If I check I am dead even if an ace comes because I he could have anything, so I decided that I was going to throw out a Cbet bluff that looked like I wanted a call and would pot commit me of 2.5K. I felt like I had to gain information and this was the only way I could. Monster stack goes into the tank and lets his timer run down and then even uses his time extension for a little more theatrics before re raising me just enough to set me in. Now his performance convinced me I was drawing dead to either a set or AA and I laid my hand down getting 4:1, maybe it was a bad lay down but I still had a couple chips. I busted out shortly later when my KQ ran into AK on K high board.
5 comments:
Those effing bigstack calling stations are a pain in the ass. As a general rule I try not to get many chips in the pot going up against them unless I have a serious hand, just because their range is all over the place, and they aren't big on folding.
One thing I am curious about is whether I should start to limp and see more flops in tournaments where there aren't many preflop raises or where I have good position. In a cash game, I can definitely do that because we don't have limited amount of chips in a cash game. But in a tournament, I feel like limping is cash spewage but on the same token, maybe that's not a bad thing... I'm obviously still experiementing with different ideas regarding tourneys... see you tonight!
If nothing else, at least Presto is still gold.
How do you pot commit yourself and then fold? I guess your not pot committed? Thats a tough hand..
I was pot committed against a random hand, but my read was AA or Set with the "performance" . Bad hand all the way around, I think if I had truly been paying attention to who limped (Monster stack) I might have folded the handed preflop, I was still thinking about the prior hand and didnt realize until after I raised that monster had limped.
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