Snowfest Ups And Downs

Myself and John O’Shea traveled to Austria to play EPT Snowfest. I decided to play day 1A, as it being a Sunday it would be softer as most of the online kids wouldn’t want to miss Sunday tournaments.

I had a pretty tough starting table that was surprisingly filled with young guys. I lost a few small pots early and then played a pot of significance. Crazy Asian man opened to 400 in MP at 75-150, I called with 5-5 two to his left and the BB also called. The flop came 8-4-2 all spades, checked to the crazy man who bet 800. I elected to raise with 2,300 (with the intention of not folding, the crazy player in the hand had been in nearly every pot so far, bluff raising, making poor calls, generally just spazzing). He called pretty quickly, which I was happy about. The turn rolled off an off-suit 10 and he checked called my bet of 6,000. The river came the dreaded king of spades and he instantly moved in on me. Of course I had to fold and was down to 18k.

My demise happened very soon after the above hand and I’m still very annoyed at myself for the way I played it. It was 75-150 and folded to the crazy Asian man (from the previous hand) in the cut-off and he makes it 400, I have Q-Q on the button and make it 1,100. I wanna isolate him with any type of playable hand in position. The small blind folds and the big blind thinks for a bit and makes it 2,700. The Asian man folds and the action is on me. The cold 4-bettor is a very good, deep-thinking player who most likely views me as kinda weak tight from the first few levels. I felt like there was a good possibility he was light here some of the time as it’s obvious I’m trying to isolate the fish. Anyway, I call and we see a J-7-6 rainbow flop, he bets 3,200 and I make what I’d think is a pretty mandatory call. The turn is a 2 and he bets 5,200 without much thought. This is where I should have just mucked, I highly doubt he double barrel bluffs in a four-bet pot pre antes. But somehow at the time I thought he would be capable of it so I called again. The river was the king of diamonds and he tanked for about 2 minutes and bet my last 7k or so. Now the chances of him bluffing are so slim particularly as my hand is pretty face up in my opinion. But because of the weird dynamic with me trying to isolate the fish and the fact that I’d been pretty weak tight so far I hero called and was shown A-A. Very disappointing stuff and I think at the time I really just over-thought the whole hand.

Since then I played two online sessions, I won small on Sunday and then won about $4k on Monday night with a couple final tables. Then I played the $1k side event which drew 200 players. We played six levels and I managed to finish day 1 with 30k in chips. We go back with about 85 players left, 24 paid and 60k for the win. I played really nicely so I’m hoping for another good day…