Sunday, January 3, 2010

A new gig

One of my neighbors knew someone trying to get a 4 table NLHE tourney together, so he recruited the Friday Night Social guys, and 5 of us piled into an SUV and made the 20 minute trip over to a neighboring suburb.

The host had a nice, new ranch with a giant finished basement. We ended up with 27 runners who all fit comfortably in the main area, and a 4th table was ready for cash games.

My table draw was favorable. 3 of my neighbors were there - I felt like I knew what they were doing. Two of the players barely knew how to play the game and needed help reading the board at showdown. There was one aggressive player besides myself.

I took big chunks off of the two greenhorns early with queens that stayed an overpair (betting big on flop and turn, checking a flushy river), and ace-king - where I called decent bets all the way with top pair vs. a lady who was too weak tight to do anything else against. She had something, and again, I was minimiizng damage, but she ended up having pocket eights and wasn't sure why I had won the pot.

These hands kept me floating early, in the middle stages I swiped a couple blinds, and a blind defender with a c-bet.

The tourney itself was nice and well-tun, but it had a fatal flaw - the blinds escalated unevenly and sometimes precipitously. The host was using a nifty little clock-radio-looking LED readout, but you couldn't see what the next blind was, only the current blind level and the time left.

At the final table of 10, we went from 1000-2000 to 1500-3000, and then 3000-6000, which basically left everyone with 10 blinds or less, and still 9-10 players. Things devolved into a push-fest from there.

I had 18000 at the jump from 3000 to 6000, going from a pretty-desperate 6 blinds to a comical 3, and the blinds were up to me right away. I folded junk in those two blind hands, then called my last 2 blinds off with Ace-deuce of clubs. I was up against ace-queen and jack-four (another super low stack), and a four on the turn left me drawing dead, out in 9th place.

I wasn't really in the mood to play the cash game, especially when I found out it was a no-limit dealer's choice affair, meaning I would be trying to win my $50 buyin back playing wildcard games. I took a seat anyway, though, vowing to play tight and simply fold in games where I had no skill edge, and not chase all the nutty draws unless they were strong.

We ended up playing less than one orbit at the cash game table. I won a giant pot with a straight in criss-cross, and then another in "Andover Holdem" (river card is wild!), and was up $67 in 20 minutes. At this point, the tourney was down to 3, and the host of the game bought himself out of the cash game, looking like he was gently trying to shoo people out of his house as he started cleaning up the food table. All 5 of us were now out of the tourney, so we said our goodbyes and moved on for wetter (read: more alcoholic) surroundings.

We closed our local bar, toasting poker, Las Vegas, the new year, and absent friends.

3 comments:

bastinptc said...

Sounds like a pub poker blind structure. Newbies...

Memphis MOJO said...

Nice report, good way to start the new year.

diverjoules said...

Hapy NEW YEAR Matt. Hope to see more of you this year. Looks like both started out with some winnings this year.