{"id":44,"date":"2015-04-23T16:18:00","date_gmt":"2015-04-23T21:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/poker.pdtodd.com\/?p=44"},"modified":"2015-04-23T16:39:36","modified_gmt":"2015-04-23T21:39:36","slug":"gargoyle-tournament-series-season-9-game-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/poker.pdtodd.com\/?p=44","title":{"rendered":"Gargoyle Tournament Series, Season 9, Game 6"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every month, Cobra and I talk about how bad we run, how unlucky we are and how some other players don\u2019t seem to have those problems. Normal poker talk right? We also say that the best way to combat those problems is to play ultra-tight early and then loosen up later. However, that\u2019s easy to say and hard to do. In this game, I attempted to make it work.<\/p>\n

Sat down a few minutes late, but within a hand or 2 picked up QQ in the small blind. It folds to me and I raise. The big blind gives me an \u201cEat shit and die look\u201d and calls. Flop is good to me, I bet, he calls.v The turn is good, but I check for pot control. The river doesn\u2019t do anything extraordinary, I bet, he calls and I take down a nice pot early on.<\/p>\n

Near the end of either level 1 or 2 I raise with A\/Qo and get 2 callers (one of them Gargoyle!). The flop completely sucks but I c-bet and get instantly raised by Gargoyle. He does this often to me when I miss with overs. I say to him, \u201cSomeday I\u2019m going to figure out what my tell is when I miss.\u201d His response is good, \u201cYou don\u2019t do it every time.\u201d Interesting, but I have no idea what I did. I fold.<\/p>\n

Got Gargoyle back a few hands later when I don\u2019t raise my pocket 10\u2019s and check-raise a low flop. Revenge!<\/p>\n

Soon after this I was moved to another table. We play with 4 tables and generally close table 4 as soon as we can. However, people busted out from all tables pretty evenly and I ended up being the first player ever to get moved TO table 4. Weird!<\/p>\n

When I sit down, I\u2019m greeted by all of the players except for Rich who says, \u201cAh, Joker, my nemesis!\u201d What!?<\/p>\n

I notice that I\u2019m calling pretty light at this table and spewing chips and remind myself to tighten up.<\/p>\n

To no one\u2019s surprise table 4 doesn\u2019t last long and I\u2019m moved to table 1 with a great seat next to Blood Fued.<\/p>\n

Nicely enough I\u2019m dealt A\/A. I raise and get 1 caller, JG2. The flop looks great and I c-bet. JG2 doesn\u2019t look impressed and calls. The turn completes the flush draw and we both check. The river looks good and the board is King high. He bets and I call. He says, \u201cI have a King\u201d and looks very happy. I turn my Aces over and somehow shock everyone that I had a good hand. Didn\u2019t anyone notice how few hands I was playing?<\/p>\n

With the blinds going up my stack starts to dwindle. I jam on Blood Feud with Q\/Q and he folds.<\/p>\n

A few hands later I get A\/A again and raise but get no action. Ok, they must have figured it out that I\u2019m playing tight.<\/p>\n

Somewhere in the middle of all this I get to see a free flop from the big blind. I flop top pair (Jack) with a crap kicker. I check, someone bets, JG2 calls and I want to raise or fold. I go into the tank and start trying to decide if I’m ahead. I finally decide that I’m ahead of the guy that bet, but not JG2 who has a very narrow range to call there, something like Q\/J, K\/J, 10\/J. I fold. They take the hand to showdown and JG2 wins with Q\/J. Boom, good read.<\/p>\n

I jam again a while later with 8\/8 after a raise from JG2 and he calls with A\/x. He doesn\u2019t improve and I\u2019m up to 9k. Starting stack size again finally! Is JG2 my own personal ATM? Will have to investigate further.<\/p>\n

No surprise to anyone, I end up jamming again in the near future. This time from the big blind with J\/J after a raise from Giac. He calls with 8\/9s, doesn\u2019t improve, and I\u2019m up to 19K. Wow, does this whole \u201cplay tight\u201d thing actually work?<\/p>\n

My last hand of note for the night was against Risky Business. What\u2019s funny is that there\u2019s a running joke where everyone calls him my name and me his name. Here\u2019s why it\u2019s funny: He raises a standard amount. I 3-bet with A\/A. He jams, I call and say, \u201cYou\u2019re not going to be happy\u2026\u201d and turn over my cards. He gives me the \u201ceat shit and die look\u201d and turns over his cards which are:<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Crap! This happened to me once before a few years ago and I remember it being terrible. Neither one of us improved and we split the pot.<\/p>\n

So here\u2019s where my tight play may have been too tight. After this hand I start folding like I\u2019m allergic to cards. I even mention to Blood Fued at one point that it seems like the only thing I know how to do is look at my cards and fold.<\/p>\n

Finally the blinds catch up to me and I\u2019m down to around 5 big blind. I jam from the big blind without looking (yes I still do this). Honey Badger calls with A\/10. I turn over J\/8s. Wow, not bad at all and one of my favorite hands. The flop is kind to me giving me a straight AND a flush draw. However, I don\u2019t improve and bust out in 11th place, my best finish in many months.<\/p>\n

As with all experiments I\u2019m glad that I conducted it. I learned a lot about my current abilities, noticed a few leaks and have a good plan for next month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every month, Cobra and I talk about how bad we run, how unlucky we are and how some other players don\u2019t seem to have those problems. Normal poker talk right? We also say that the best way to combat those … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[12,14,4,8,11],"class_list":["post-44","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-play-history","tag-gargoyle","tag-hand-reading","tag-hold-em","tag-poker","tag-tournament"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5DXf1-I","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/poker.pdtodd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/poker.pdtodd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/poker.pdtodd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poker.pdtodd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poker.pdtodd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/poker.pdtodd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47,"href":"https:\/\/poker.pdtodd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions\/47"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/poker.pdtodd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poker.pdtodd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poker.pdtodd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}