I was really enjoying my time in Barcelona and got off to a very good start in the tournament. By the time the blinds got to 150-300 with a 25 ante, I had a pretty good handle on my opponents. The following hand occurred with a couple of players missing from the table, so we were essentially playing sevenhanded.
There was a very conservative player on my left who played very few hands throughout the first few levels, but the hands that he had shown down were all premium. He was a German guy who looked very imposing - probably 6 feet 4 inches tall and 260 pounds, with a Mr. Clean-like shaved head and an earring - but in previous hands he had played more like a little girl!
Now, the following hand isn't going to seem overly intense as far as the size of the pot is concerned, or important in regard to the outcome of the tournament, but it was interesting in that it was based on both a tell and previous betting patterns. Playing online will definitely help you in recognizing betting patterns, thus making difficult decisions easier, but getting more experience in live settings will help you to pick up on important and sometimes very obvious tells.
Before eventually raising preflop, the German guy hesitated for a moment. He seemed to look around the table and realize, "Well, it's a little shorthanded, so I guess I have to raise this hand." He didn't look as confident as he had in past hands when he had raised before the flop. So, it appeared to me that he was raising with a rather marginal hand.
He made it 900 from under the gun and everybody folded to me in the big blind, where I looked down at A-8 offsuit. This obviously was not a great hand, especially against an under-the-gun raise, but it was a shorthanded table and I thought I had pretty good command of my opponent post-flop.
I decided to call the 600 and the flop came Q
10
8
. This flop gave me bottom pair. It was not exactly a great situation, as I had no club in my hand, so I checked to him, and he hesitated for just a bit and then checked. I wasn't feeling any strength from him, based on his check. It seemed to me that he had a hand like A-J.
The turn card was the 2
, putting four clubs out there. I checked again, and my opponent checked, so I was starting to feel much better about my hand having a chance to be in the lead.
The river card was the 6
. I, of course, checked, and my opponent rather awkwardly fired out a bet of 1,500. At this point, I delved into my memory bank of how this player had played hands in the past, and realized that he had a tendency to check down marginal hands on the river. I saw him check big overpairs in situations in which most players would bet. So, it was clear to me that this particular player, in this type of situation, was going to show me the A
or absolutely nothing.
Aside from picking up on this player's betting patterns, there was something else that had me leaning toward a call. He seemed to be clenching his teeth in a very awkward way, almost grinding them like somebody with a cocaine habit! It was something he'd never done before. He didn't look like a drug addict or anything like that, but he looked very nervous, to say the least. So, after a long deliberation, I decided to make the call. When I did, he sort of looked puzzled, and then tapped the table.
That kind of play does wonders for my image at the table, as I'm essentially saying, "Don't mess with me and try to rob me; I might have my radar working today and call you."
Frankly, especially in a tournament scenario, the best type of image to have is one of a calling station - someone who's going to make big calls in situations in which other players will fold. I've been called a calling station, and that suits me just fine! That image actually makes people less likely to try to bluff you, and at the same time it leads them to believe that they can value-bet more hands against you. So, for a calling station like me, it actually makes it easier to trap players on the river by checking medium to good hands against them. They've often value-bet the worst hand, thinking you'll call them with a weaker hand.
Not only that, but making a call like that and being right just added a new level of confidence to my game. At the end of day one, I was absolutely brimming with confidence and believed that I was going to go very deep in the tournament. Unfortunately for me, on day two, while I did build my stack up pretty well, I ended up playing two identical race hands, winning the first coin flip with Q-Q versus A-K, but ultimately losing the second one with the exact same hand, Q-Q versus A-K.
So, I wasn't able to win my first-ever
European Poker Tour event, but I was extremely confident that my play was at a high level, and I felt very good about the rest of
EPT schedule and my chances to be the first player in the world to win a
World Series of Poker bracelet, a
World Poker Tour title, and a
European Poker Tour title.
