Tuesday, June 14, 2005

94 - An All-In Hand If Ever I Saw One

Friday night freezeout at Fourth Street - instead of the £15 rebuy tourney of previous weeks, this event has changed to a £30 freezeout. I prefer this as it means you immediately start with 2500 chips, rather than the 800 of the rebuys, so there's more scope for proper poker.

Scope I very nearly blew when I got knocked down to about 400 chips relatively early on. The first couple of dozen hands at our table were fairly quiet - no one showed a hand down and the same chips got pushed about between players. Then came a hand when I got dealt AQ. I can't remember the exact position of the players, but I recall that I came to the conclusion at some point that the other guy had a weaker ace than me, but I flat called at one stage instead of reraising, thus allowing his kicker to hit the board, and I doubled him through. I was very annoyed with myself, but I felt better over the course of the next 45 minutes or so as, through a period of very good bluffing and recognising stealing opportunities, I managed to regain all that I had lost, plus a bit more.

Once we were down to two tables, the blinds had a bit of a steep jump, so I quickly found myself shortstacked. My cards were cold so I needed an opportunity to steal to stay alive. I'm on the button, and had identified the BB as someone who would only defend his blind with premium cards, so even before my cards came to me, I'd decided to push for the blinds if it was folded round to me, which it was. I went all in (about 6BB) even though I only had 94. to my horror, the SB called. "I'm in trouble I thought", but I had a lifeline when he turned over 33, giving me two live overcards (and a 45% chance of winning). I didn't hit and was out, though I think I've developed a reputation as a bluffer, as it's not the first time I've been caught going all-in with not-very-much. I must try and use this reputation in the future.

Once out of the freezeout I got stuck into a couple of SNGs, and came second in both, meaning I broke even for the night. The second SNG was a comedy affair. I built up a huge stack by gambling with Ace-rag, coming up against a better Ace, and winning (usually by hitting a flush or a straight). Four times in a row this happened, knocking out 3 other players. Sometimes you just hit a run of luck. This continued into the heads-up, though it took on the more general 'favourite's no good' form, as seemingly every time one of us got all-in, the inferior hand would win. I thought I had it won when he went all in with 44 against my QQ but, predictably, he made his set on the river. After a good tussle, he finally prevailed, but I had got some great heads-up experience.

Saturday night I found a fantastic muppet on the NL table on Crypto. An awful player kept getting lucky against everyone else at the table, but found his crappy cards didn't hit against me, so I took everyone's money via him. I worked £100 up to over £500 - my best ever NL cash result.

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