A Couple Deep Runs

In the last week I made a few deep runs in tournaments but again came up short of any meaningful takedowns. It was kind of odd; I played 6 tournaments last Sat night (20th) and 6 tournaments this past Monday night (22nd) and cashed in three each night. Not that interesting except last Saturday I cashed in all three of my Full Tilt events and whiffed in my 3 PokerStars events but Monday I cashed in all three of my PokerStars events and none of the 3 I played on Full Tilt. Here is a quick rundown of my cashes:

Saturday

4k Guarantee (PLO 24+2) Min cashed for like $40. 27 cashed and with 40ish left I had a big stack (top 5 or so) when this happened:

Full Tilt Poker Game #9602264632: $4,000 Guarantee (73091365), Table 17 - 150/300 - Pot Limit Omaha Hi - 23:05:23 ET - 2008/12/20
Seat 1: Kiajessie (17,307)
Seat 2: AWPTMoneyMan (10,234)
Seat 3: squeakmidge (4,122)
Seat 4: FkePlasticTrees (12,240)
Seat 5: gdgenius (2,190)
Seat 6: groove31 (9,172), is sitting out
Seat 7: lfunk11 (4,635)
Seat 8: dtrecord (6,775)
Seat 9: Madflash (7,267)
AWPTMoneyMan posts the small blind of 150
squeakmidge posts the big blind of 300
The button is in seat #1
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to FkePlasticTrees [As 3h Ac Qh]
FkePlasticTrees calls 300
gdgenius folds
groove31 folds
lfunk11 folds
dtrecord folds
Madflash folds
Kiajessie calls 300
AWPTMoneyMan folds
squeakmidge checks
*** FLOP ***
[7s 4h Ad]
squeakmidge checks
FkePlasticTrees bets 1,050
Kiajessie folds
squeakmidge has 15 seconds left to act
squeakmidge raises to 3,822, and is all in
FkePlasticTrees calls 2,772
squeakmidge shows [5s 8s Jd 6c]
FkePlasticTrees shows [As 3h Ac Qh]
*** TURN ***
[7s 4h Ad] [Ks]
*** RIVER ***
[7s 4h Ad Ks] [8d]
squeakmidge shows a straight, Eight high
FkePlasticTrees shows three of a kind, Aces
squeakmidge wins the pot (8,694) with a straight, Eight high

I could have, of course, played this more aggressively and raised preflop but I like to occassionally play it this way to disguise my hand. After the flop the hand played out totally standard and unfortunately he hit.

Still had good chip stack after this but then never really hit any hands and just slowly lost chips until I got it in with 2 pair on the flop and lost to a flopped set.

Daily Double A&B (NLHE 10+2) Cashed for $50 and $25 respectively plus bonus

Cashed in both of these which gets you a bonus based on the size of the fields. This night the double cash bonus was abt $50. Bonuses get bigger if you double final table (like 3-4k) but the fields are pretty big (abt 1,000 each) so that rarely happens. I was pretty healthy stack in DDB when I reraised a button raiser all-in with 99 from the BB and he snap called with AK and spiked a K on the river. Win that and I am top 3 in chips. DDA I pretty much just min cashed.

I did fold KK preflop in DDB for maybe the second time I can remember. We were down to abt 125-150 or so and I was in late position. Table was pretty aggressive and 3x raises were pretty std. I was probably top 25-30 in chips. UTG calls which was odd because he was very active and aggressive. 2nd to act raised the minimum. Again seemed strange. Folded to me and I thought about this a long time. Finally I came to the conclusion that one of them had AA. Had to. So I folded. They started raising each other and turned out that UTG had AA and UTG+1 had the other KK hand. SO good fold by me.

Monday night

Had 2 min cashes; one in $10 Pot-Limit Omaha High Low rebuy for about $80 and the other in a $22 NLHE tournament for a min cash of abt $45.

Bigger cash came in the 9:15 p.m. $11 NLHE for abt $100. I finished 12th out of about 1250. Was a big stack for quite awhile when someone reraised my AA all in with their 77 and I doubled up. Then we were down to 2 tables and the chip leader was at my table just killing us. He was literally raising every hand. So I decided when I got a pretty hand I was shipping it in. I had ~110,000. Blinds were 6,000/12,000/1,500 and he raised to 30k which was his standard. Fold in front of me and I have JT suited. Pretty enough for me and I ship it in. This is obv not a great hand but I have a few things going my way:

1) He can't have a hand every time and he has not seen me get out of line or be very active at all so he may well fold and I pick up blinds, anted and his 30k bet.
2) Even if he does have a hand like 77-99, AQ, or AK I have live cards and in the case of small/medium pairs I am racing for a double up.

Well the next guy folds and suddenly the BB time banks and decides to call. Not good. Then the active raiser snap calls and I am dead. Raiser has KK, BB had JJ then I come in third with JTdd. Oh well have to make some plays like that at times. This time it didn't work. So sucks and I am out for ~$100 when first paid over $2,400.

This Sunday I am planning on playing a full load of tournaments on both sites. My best guess is that I will play the following:

Stars

3:00 $50+5 Sunday $125k guarantee (will satellite into this)
3:30 $10+1 $500k guarantee (going for the largest online poker tournament ever)
4:00 $10 rebuy $70,000 guarantee
4:30 $200+15 Sunday Million (actually this week $2.5M guarantee; already satellited in to this event for $50)

Tilt

3:15 Holiday $100k freeroll
4:00 $69+6 $22,500 Guarantee
4:15 $24+2 PLO Bounty $3,500 guarantee
4:35 $22 "Double Duece" $100k guarantee
4:45 $69+6 PLO $6,000 guarantee
6:00 $200+16 Sunday $750,000 guarantee (will satellite into)
6:00 $24+2 PL Split $3,000 guarantee

All are NLHE unless stated otherwise. I may add or delete events but these are the ones I am interested in playing. I usually only like to play 6 or 7 tables at a time so it could get to be too many. Haven't had a Sunday schedule like this in a long time and with school being out, etc it just works as a good time to give it a run. Hopefully will have something good to write about early next week.

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Sunday Win

Played a bunch of tournaments yesterday and was having no success. Busted out of two Full Tilt events ($69 PLO, 24NLHE) fairly deep but before the cash bubble. Two more events I went out pretty early ($24 NLHE and $22 NLHE), one with bad play by me and the other getting sucked out on.

I also played two tournaments on Stars (including the 1.5M guarantee) and did nothing. In the Sunday Million I was actually going along fairly well in the third hour when i made a terrible river call for 90% of my chips. Don't mind how I played the hand just hate that I called off without really thinking it through.

I also went out in the third hour of the Full Tilt 750k. I was not really getting anything going and had 5k or so in chips. The blinds were 140/280/25. I raised to 780 from 2nd position with KK. Button calls. Flop comes 3 rags with 2 hearts. I bet 1300 into the ~2200 pot and he calls. Now at this point his range is an overpair(like TT or 99), a flush draw or a flopped set (think the board was 7, 5, 2). If he has the set nothing I can do. Turn is an offsuit 4. This is unlikely to help him unless he has A3 of hearts. So I fire my remaining ~3k into the pot and he snap calls showing AThh. Obv the river is a heart and I am out. His play here is pretty bad. He put ~5k of his 8k in the pot with really only the flush draw (though the A is live to he is clearly only counting the hearts). Would have put me up around 10k in chips and in good position to go pretty deep.

So I was pretty disappointed with how the day was going and only had one additional tournament, the 3k guarantee which is a $24 Pot Limit HA event (1/2 PL Holdem and 1/2 PLO). I was crusing along not really doing much in this then with about 40 to go I sucked out on a guy with runner runner hearts to make a flush. Then I had some chips and was able to chip up. 18 players cashed and when I got to this point I was 10th in chips. Then I got a fortunate run of cards:

Doubled up with KK in the Holdem portion vs AK suited
Busted a medium stack player with AAxx in PLO when he had KKxx
Flopped boat on a 663 board when I held 3456

Finally with 6 to go I had 100k more in chips then any other players. I then went card dead and played pretty tight until we got 3 handed. I busted the shortstack with AJ vs. his A6. Once we were heads up I had a a huge chip lead which he actually came back and took from me at one point. Then the key hand of the tournament came up in PLO when I rivered 7-J str8. He had made a 9 high str8 on the turn and only bet 1/2 the pot (6k). I called because I had a wrap to the bigger str8 with any 8,9 or T. Well an 8 fell and I led at the pot. He raised me. I checked the board and made sure I had the nuts. I reshipped and amazingly he called with the lower str8. That doubled me up and gave me a 450k to 30k chip advantage. Couple hands later it was over.

So one tournament took what was a really, really bad day and made it a pretty good day. I also won a few hundred playing PLO cash games so overall a pretty good Sunday.