So I've made references to this Tuesday night poker weekly tournament crew in my previous posts. As promised, let me talk about this group before I go into how the opening tournament of 2007 went. Every Tuesday, there's a group of like 8-10 guys that rotate in and out based on work schedule, personal business, etc but are fairly consistent in terms of showing up. Everyone has their own style and some are better than others but actually, the skill level is probably fairly even. Well, it's basically a one table tournament with a $25 buy-in that happens every week and usually, top 2 places get paid unless there are more than 8 people and if there are, then top 3 gets paid (3rd place basically gets the money back). An interesting twist to this thing is that each week, there's a portion of the pot that's taken from the main pot into this side pot. This side pot ends up as the prize for the most winning player of the year. Each week, the winner of the tournament gets 5 pts and 2nd place gets 3 points. When there are 8 or more players, 3rd place also gets 1 pt. Whoever ends up with the highest score takes down the side pot. It just becomes a nice little incentive to win and also to encourage participation.
So, this was the opening week of the Tuesday tourney. I was determined to start off the year right but I guess it just wasn't meant to be. I busted out 7th place out of 9 when I pushed with my short stack with A9, to be called by a guy with pocket tens... who flops quads. Nice. There were couple of turning points for me... the first one that really hurt was when I flopped a flush with my 6-2 of spades. Why was I in the hand to begin with? I think I was in the big blind. I checked and so did everyone else. Turn comes a K (nonspade) and I bet out. Short stack pushes in for another 30 (at this point, there's about 30 in the pot) so I call instantly. He flips over KQ but Q of spades and the river comes another spade. That was a pretty big pot to lose for me.
Another key hand came when I had about 100 left in chips and the blinds were maybe 4/8. I was on the button with pocket 10s. One player who is relatively aggressive raised to 3 times the big blind so I call. It was heads up and the flop comes 3-6-8, all hearts. I didn't have a heart. He bets out $25 which was a pretty healthy bet at that time so I didn't think he didn't have a flush. So, based on him being a relatively aggressive player but not one to get out of line too much, I figured he might be one away from a flush. Either that or a high pocket pair with a heart (so, I thought, AK, AA, KK, QQ, JJ, AQ, AJ, KQ, KJ with one heart for any of them). After the bet on the flop, he had 80 behing him so I thought about pushing all in but I just wasn't sure. So, I just called. And when I did, he didn't look like he liked that. Turn came a 9 and he checked so I figured this was my chance. I bet 50, just to be reraised all in for 30 more which I pretty much had to call. He had pocket nines, caught trips on the turn and since one of his 9 was also a heart, I basically had a one outer that I didn't catch. That pretty much crippled me which led to the hand I described in the beginning of this paragraph. I left shortly thereafter so I don't know who ended up winning but this was not the start I was looking for. I need to step it up next week!
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3 comments:
would have loved to have seen you re-raise him and push all in after the flop on that 10's hand.
I really wanted to. And seriously considered it. The only thing that worried me was if he had a pocket pair higher than mine with one heart. Basically, I figured that if one of his cards were a heart, he wouldn't go anywhere. So if he had JJ with a heart, no way he would fold that. That's why I wanted to see what the turn brought. I figured if it was a safe card (a card lower than 10 and nonheart), I would bet big and put him to the test. Unfortunately, the turn met both criteria except it gave him a set which sucked. In hindsight though, I can't see him folding pocket 9s there since one of them was a heart. JJ does not fold hands like that I don't think.
JJ weren't meant for jacks. Those were the initials of his nickname.
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