A Week of Poker in Seattle – Part 2

This is the continuing saga of A Week of Poker in Seattle.

In the first post, I talked about poker on Wednesday through Friday, two tournaments and one cash game. Now we have the weekend…

Saturday, I went to the Muckleshoot Casino for the 4th event in their Summer Classic poker series. It was a $500 buy-in NL tournament with $10k added to the prize pool. You start off with 15k in chips and play 30 minute levels. I got off to a good start. I had 20k at the first break and 42k by the second break (that was double the chip average). By dinner, I was up to 93k while the average was 35k. Things were going well. Around this time, things tend to get volatile in these 30 level tournaments. A significant number of people tend to just hang around and then end up with stacks in the 10-25 big blind range. So you start to get a lot of moving all-in as a re-raise. I won a few of these pots, but also ran the AQ into the KK, and the AK into the AQ for some hits to my stack. I managed to stay in the top 3-5 in chips until we were down to 20 players or so, peaking at about 550K around that time. The tournament paid 27 spots so I was in the money already. By the time we redrew for the final table, I had fallen back to 440k, which was about average.

The final table was 10 handed, and the first time I had the button, it folded around to me. The blinds were 10/20k, and I raised to 50k with AJ. The small blind with 180k folded and the big blind with 490k moved all in. This player was the most aggressive player left at the table (and possibly the best of the competition), and certainly had a wide range of hands here. It was an interesting spot. 10th paid $2,500, 1st was $35k. 5th was somewhere in the $7k range. So you really had to make it to the top 3 to get a significant amount more than 10th place money. The average stack was 400k, or 20 BBs, so play was going to be quick and aggressive. And I had to call 390k with 540k in the pot. I thought I was close to 50% to win the pot against a reasonably wide range (A 15% range for him would put me real close to 50% equity). So I called. He had 33 and won the pot. 10th place for $2,500… It was also 12:30 in the morning after starting at noon. I had to drive 45 minutes home and be back by noon on Sunday for the $750…

So Sunday, I went back to the Muckleshoot for the $750 buy-in with $20k added. This tournament had 45 minute levels and a final table on Monday (with a 2am curfew). My first effort was short lived. You start with 20k, and I had built my stack up to 22k. A gentleman in his 50s got moved to my table and was 2 seats to my right. His 3rd or 4th hand at the table, he had KK in the SB, he 3-bet and quickly got 25k (250 bbs) all-in against another player preflop. The board ran out a 7 high straight, so he split the pot with the guy who had AA. The next hand, I got dealt AA in the big blind. A mid-position player raised. 2 people, including this guy flatted. So I made a decent sized 3-bet. This player was the only caller. The flop came 976 with 2 diamonds. I led and he raised. I called and we both had about 20% of our chips in the pot. The turn was a non-diamond 6. I checked and he bet 1/3 his chips. So this is really the big decision point. Generally, I think it is right to fold here against most people. But I was swayed by how quickly he got all the chips in with the kings the previous hand (I am not saying I would have folded, but he had that “I have a big hand so I am putting my chips in without considering what my opponent might have” look). I thought that with that mentality, he might have TT, JJ or QQ, as well as a set. So I didn’t fold. He had a set of sevens and I was off to the window to re-enter the tournament.

The second effort got off to a slow start as well. I had quickly turned 20k into 12k when this pot happened. I had 99 in the SB. A mid-position player raised, and 5 people took the flop including me and the BB. The flop came 975 with two diamonds. Three of us got all in, me with top set, the BB with the 86 of spades, and the cut-off with the nut diamond draw. I had them both covered (10k and 8k) and the board paired on the river. I was off and running. I little while later, I doubled with KK vs 99 all-in preflop, then I won another nice pot with a set vs. top pair. I had a lot of good hands that afternoon and ended the day with 836k of the 4.6M chips that were in play. That was good for 2nd position of the 16 of us that were coming back on Monday.

Monday, we restarted at 5pm. This tournament had started with 230 people and paid 23 spots, so we were well into the money. 1st was $48k, that was what we all wanted. The day started off pretty rough. I lost a couple pots, including one where I had bluffed. All of a sudden I was sitting there 8 handed with 360k. Then this hand came up. I was in the SB and it folded to me. The blinds were 6k/12k. I opened for 32k with 99 and the BB moved all in for 480k (360k effective). I had played with him for the last 3 hours the night before and he had been short-stacked the whole night. He had doubled up about 4 hands before this one with QQ. He tended to be a pretty solid player who understood his hand values. I had noticed though, when he had a monster type hand, he tended to make smallish type bets and made sure he got value for his hands. So I thought there was a much smaller chance of running into a bigger pair and that it was really likely that he held AK or AQ. I called and it turned out it was AK. The flop came king high and I was in trouble. But a 9 came on the river and I won the pot. I was back to the 800k stack I started the day with.
I played pretty well until we were down to three handed. I had busted 3 people and had 2.2M in chips. One opponent had 1.7M and the other had 700k. The deeper stack opened a pot to 70k at the 15k/30k level. I had 33 in the big blind and called. The flop came T43 with two clubs and I made a small check raise. The turn was the 9c. I lead for about 200k and he moved in. I took a minute and called. I knew he was an aggressive player, but I also know this play is never a bluff. He had KT with a club, the river was a brick, and we were heads up. I went on to win the tournament for $48k. The points from that win were also enough to put me in second for the all-around-player competition. That was good for another $4k. All said, a great week of poker in Seattle, even though it started out a little rough…
-Rep