Thursday, March 29, 2007

Aces continue to cost me

Last night, two tournaments and three times I run into Aces!

In the 12k I was down to the last fifty, when I was dealt KK, I thought I played the hand absolutely brilliantly until my opponent turned over AA! LOL! I bet he thought he played it exactly the same and ended up with my chips! I have ran into AA a lot with Kings recently.

I have just seen a further comment on the play I made last night with QJ. In this situation I could not put my opponent on a pocket pair of Jacks or above, or indeed a hand that would have me dominated and therefore with 6-4 pot odds, I have odds to call against a possible combination of small mid pair, ace rag or total bluff. I think it is also knowing who you are playing. My belief from experience is that Dewi would have not pushed all in with a premium hand, if I was playing Jamie 'FISHMAC' it would have been a lot more difficult to make that call, as he would push there with a much wider range of cards, which makes him so difficult to read. He could have easily gone all in there with Aces or 45.

My improved form continued last night in the $3k. I finished in 3rd place with $500+, but am dissapointed I did not finish in the top 2. I started well and was chip leader early on. I then lost over half my stack with QQ to AK, meaning I had to adjust my game.
I managed a double up just before the final table when my AA beat QQ and again when I flopped a set of 9s against 8s.
On the final table, the short stacks got themselves knocked out fairly early. When we were down to five players, I called a raise with 77. The flop was 9TT. With just 5000 in the pot, one guy bet 7500 of his 10000. It just felt wrong, so I moved all in. To my suprise he then folded leaving himself just 2500 chips. I am amazed he did not call, but I obviously got the read correct.

With 3 left, I was in 2nd place. Chip leader was on 80k, I had 36k with 3rd place on 10k.
At this point any luck I had ran out.
The chip leader was using his chips well. After I had lost 10k and there was another raise from him, I had to move over the top with my 76 to which he folded. Chips were back up and I was going for the win.
I have AK against the short stack, he has 3T all the chips are in the middle and the 3 is paired.

Two hands later I get 77, the short stack raises, I reraise he has AA. I fight my way back to 25k from 10k over the next 10 hands, without a showdown. The chip leader raises yet again, I am over the top with my 44. He turns over AA. How many times am I going to run into AA this week! Still my second consecutive final table in this tournament. A win is coming.

Dissapointment last night as the Winner Choice final was cancelled due to just 8 runners (10 required) First prize is £1200 for a live event in the UK, which is a great prize if you have just 10 players. For some reason it appeared 20 - 25% of the network decided to watch the England game last night! Why!

A quick word on Monte Carlo, a few friends of mine have all survived day 1A. Well done to Mihay, Desh and Tony Cas. All below starting chips (12,6 and 12) but great to be coming back to play on Friday.

Good luck today to Martyn, Onny and the legend Tony Chessa.

Tonights its the Dream Team tournament, (lots of pressure with half the team missing) the £12k on Littlewoods and I am also going to enter the Mansion $100k at 9pm.

ClintonO

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

So you are on the button, playing 1370 chips with blinds at 75/150 and you limp (for 11% of your stack not 8%) and a pot of 550 (not 600). Then you CALL an all-in from behind with the mighty QJ. Wow. Words fail me. This is so un-Clinton like I'm amazed. I'm convinced you KNOW this is poor play and you are using pot odds/tight ranges as a defence to disguise it after the event.

If you are happy to commit here, surely with only 9BB the correct play is for you to have raised/pushed (my view is push but I know you often like to raise rather than push even with a short stack) rather than back to front limp/call madness. The exception to this if it was a pre-meditated trap limp (hard to believe with QJ with someone already in the pot and 2 to act behind).

Come on, admit it!

Anonymous said...

No no Clinton, the original poster was not Dewi. You probably wont know me, but I've decided to switch to Crypto on a far more regular basis now, so you can expect to see me on the Final Table of all the major events (and possibly the GBPT in Nottingham if I read your blog correctly)...

The call is far more reasonable now that you have explained your read on Dewi. Still, you can't rule out that he had A-rag K-T, or even KJ. As an earlier poster said 'It's a tough call' (with your specific read). One I'm still not sure I would make; do Littlewoods have a 96-hour time bank? I might have a concrete decison by Monday.

I've been hearing lots about Mansion and it's $100k, I might have to check it out.

Keep up the good work Clint, they can't have AA everytime.

P.S Do any of your Crypto-mates larging it up in Monte Carlo have blogs? That would be an interesting read.

Anonymous said...

the qj is very bad play.to call when short stackd.if playing the hand surely all good players raise here - maybe raise to eg 700 stop n go style or just straight all in as if u r playing the hand to hit then u may aswell look 4 fold equity and if u r called and hit then even better as u will double-do u not c this!?- playing the hand in the manner you have is the style we see from general calling stations who havent quite grasped it and play hands in a reverse fashion-kind of like limp trapping-i know u r better than this and do not believe u shud b justifying it to pple trying to learn-we all make mistakes,if i had the 55 i would be asking what you are playing at.when short stackd pot odds are always available as an excuse for any decision as your move of all in will always have pot odds for obvious reasons,there will always be extra money in the pot(thats what u get with an all in move)-so this is never a valid reason for a bad play as it is always there on an all in move regardless-its a given right for a "last stand".reading your ept report it appears you have just blinded out and again used pot odds to justify a move when incredibly short chipped-going through the report there doesnt seem to be a hand that you can attribute your downfall to -eg my qq lost to ak - but nothing seems to be there.you must have just blinded down where surely you should have been pushing with atc when had more chips,-regardless of holdings-pushing 7k utg with 56o is better than blinding out 1/2 ur stak and exiting like a lame duck.i have read many reports of big players live event exits and if you are so weak that you cannot push uncalled then you have messed up.(unless of course you have just been crippled in a pot)-being card dead is never an excuse.(i cant imagine any of the big names ever getting so weak without some kind of clash for a decent pot)u seem to have a few doubters of the qj hand and also too of the ept play and i can c the reasoning,i'm not saying i know best -just offering my perception of the 2 debated scenarios in a good discussion on advanced play.this blog was a good read.gl 4 the future.,regards , "BadBeaterzJack" from norwich - mainly a live player now after starting out online many years ago.