Foxwoods $160 Deepstack Tournament 8/1

Joined Cobra for a $160 deep stack at Foxwoods.

20,000 starting chips and 20 minute levels. Pretty good structure and we ended up getting around 105 buy-in’s.

As usual, I started our pretty slow. I really was having a good time watching some of the players at my table as many of them appeared to be terrible. There were a couple of competent thinking players and I vowed to stay away from them unless there was a good situation. There really was so much “good” action that I knew I could be profitable without getting into trouble with them.

Limped/called in a few spots with small pairs. Lost the first pot I opened, with 10/10, when an Ace came on the flop and the aggro guy on my immediate right donk bet. He was doing that a lot and I knew I could find a good spot to take a lot of his chips.

Won my first pot simply by hand reading. Flop came all low and the original raiser bet but looked pretty sick about it. I raised and everyone folded. I feel like hand reading comes naturally to me and that I should really continue to focus on that aspect of my game.

Finally had some good luck and found K/K in late position. Made a normal raise and got 3 callers. Flop was not bad for me, all low, but had 2 diamonds and a potential straight draw. With 4 players in, I decided to just bomb the flop and force at least 1-2 players off their draws. It worked well and only one player, the big blind, stayed in. The turn did not complete the flush but did give the board some more straight potential. My opponent checked and I opted to move all-in. I hoped that would either force him out or force him to make a bad call. He did think about it for a while but eventually folded. This gave me a nice bump in chips.

I went on to win a few more hands with cards like A/K and A/Q.

After the break, I’m sitting on around 30k when this hand happens:

I’m on the button and have A/Qo. 2 limpers and I make it 3ish bb’s to continue. They both call. Flop is A/x/x. Check/check and I bet around 50% of the pot. The first player to act is one of the competent players I mentioned. He immediately raises to 3x my bet. I’m assuming he doesn’t think I have an Ace but at this point I don’t think he hasn’t anything to really challenge my hand with as I’d seen him play mostly straight forward in these types of situations. The other player to act is the aggro guy on my right. His action? All-in. I waste no time and say, “Re-raise. All-in.” Competent guy looks like he’s been played and says, “I think I just donated to you guys.” And folds. We turn our cards over and aggro guy has middle pair, ok kicker. My hand holds up and I move up to around 45k. Nice.

I win a few more hands, but nothing really interesting. I do manage to work my way up to around 60K though.

I’m feeling pretty good when this hand happens.

I’m in the big blind with 6/8o. Not terrible for the big blind, especially if I get to see the flop for cheap. There are 5 or 6 players in the hand and we see a flop of 6/8/9 2 diamonds. Pretty good flop for me as I can almost guarantee a lot of action. I check and the LOL on my left bets about 60% of the pot. She gets 3 callers making the pot pretty large and I opt to move all-in. She has about 20K behind and I’ve got to figure I’m a little ahead against her, maybe 60/40 at worst. She of course calls and it folds around to a grouchy old nit 2 to my right. He is furious. He’s literally just mad about the whole situation. He has about 10k left and just throws his arms up in disgust and calls. She turns over A/Qd (SHOCKER!) and he turns over K/10d. I’m actually really happy to see that both of them have diamonds as now there are only 5 diamonds left unaccounted for that will help them (the other 2 giving me a full-house). The turn however, isn’t the best card for me, another 9. Ugh. Now if either of them pair one of their cards they’ll have a better 2-pair than me. Of course, the grumpy old nit hits a 10 on the river and wins the pot. He doesn’t have the LOL covered so I still get about 10k back from the pot, but I’m down to around 45k again. Why did he have to call!? A bit tilted still about this.

From there on out I start finding myself second best a lot. Looking back, I can clearly see that I was no longer playing my A-Game.

My chip stack bleeds down to around 30k and when blinds are 1200/2400/400 I find myself with 9/9 in late position. I raise to 6,000 and only get one caller, the remaining competent player. Based on his action, I have him on a pair or over cards. The flop is a craptacular A/K/10. He checks and I figure there’s no way to win if I make a normal bet so I opt to shove. He insta-calls and turns over Q/J for the flopped nuts. Lovely. My read was right, it just wasn’t quite what I was hoping for (something like K/Q). My thinking there is that I might be able to bluff that I have A/K or A/10 or something. Ah well! Out in 37th place.

Definitely had a good time and really enjoyed playing in the casino after not playing in one for such a long time. Definitely a lot different than playing at Gargoyles, but for sure, Gargoyles has given me a leg-up on the competition.

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