Viktor Blom and Villains in Vilamoura

I sit down to my stack of 30k and am hoping for a good table draw when Viktor Blom (Isildur1?) sits two seats to my left. For the next two hours himself and his other Scandi friend proceeded to play every single pot, it was quite a sight to behold.

He is by far the most aggressive player I have encountered, and the fact he and his mate were drinking heavily probably brought up the levels of recklessness quite a lot.

Anyway, he busted after two hours so I was lucky in that sense. Now onto how my day one went. I played very nitty the first two levels of play as I wanted to get a feel for the table, one of the players at the table even made fun of how tight I was playing (which is very unlike me).

I doubled up at the end of level two. With 100/200 blinds and Isildur’s mate opened to 600 in middle position. I flat call the button with Q T and the tight big blind makes it 2,400. The Scandi peels, as do I. The flop comes an acceptable K-J-9 with two hearts. The three-bettor leads for 3,800. The Scandi passes and I raise to 7,900.

He calls pretty qucikly and the turn rolls off a blank deuce. He check calls 11,200. At this point I thought his range consisted of sets, A-K and A-A. He didn’t seem like the type of player to be overly light in that spot. Anyway, the river pairs the board with a 9. Obviously a pretty bad card for me, but he checked to me and I thought for a while before shoving the rest of my stack in as I still get value from a lot of hands. He tanked for ages and eventually made a pretty terrible call with A-A.

The rest of the day went extremely well for me and I finished the day on 140,000. I made very few mistakes and changed gears nicely.

Day two was the polar opposite of day one. I got a terrible table draw with Stevie444 to my direct left and Dario Minieri to his left. I lost a fairly sizeable pot in the first level and just found it hard to battle back.

With blinds at 500/1,000, the player under the gun opened to 2,800 playing about 70,000. I call with A-Ks from the hi-jack, hoping to induce to spazzyness from the two ‘names’ behind me.

Everyone folds and we get heads up to a flop of Kx 6 7 and the raiser leads for 4,000, I call and the turn comes and offsuit 10 and he leads for 12,000.

I was a little shocked by the bet sizing but definitely felt I had to call one more. I planned on folding the river if he made another absurdly large bet as my line obviously looks quite strong. The river came a 6 and he bet 12,000 again pretty quickly. It was one of those spots where I knew I was never ever gonna be good but, sigh, called anyway as I still beat some of his value range and I was getting such a sick price.

He tabled A-A and scooped the pot. I busted about two levels later after literally losing every pot I played, its hard to win at poker when you keep having the second best hand. I got it all-in with A-T offsuit against some Russian maniac’s K-9 after snap three-bet calling off my last 30 big blinds.

I was obviously disappointed to bust after having such a great stack coming into day two, but I learnt a lot which will stand me in good stead when i’m in that position in the future.

I think I tried to play too many hands on day two when I should have been nitting it up a little more. The night I busted I played a little online and managed to scoop a $59 super turbo tournament for $7,000, it was a lot of fun and cheered me up a little.

I’m now looking forward the UKIPT Dublin which is on this weekend. From there it’s onto Marrakesh for the 5k event they’re having, I hear the cash games are crazy out there also. A lot to look forward to!

Oh and congrats to Toby Lewis for winning EPT Vilamoura, you sicko!