I've just returned from a long weekend away in Nottingham after making the journey up for the Monte Carlo £1k NL event held at the Dusk Till Dawn poker club. This was the last live event of the year for me so it would have been great to bink a decent score, sadly and not surprisingly it wasn't to be. Thankfully I had spilt action with 4 other players (7.5% each) amazingly each of them managed to cash, BrotherM topping the list with 5th followed by MrNiceness in 9th with Rhym and Paul Walters both min cashing. This meant I made a slight profit for the trip as I managed to loose a little playing in some ridiculously soft cash games.
My tournament run didn't last too long, I got off to a good start hitting 42k in chips within the first level (30k starting stacks). I won a decent pot early on during the first level. I'd been reasonably active, and open AKo from the CO, folds to BB who 3bets me. Given that we're 300bbs deep and I have position I don't really see any point in 4 betting it. I flat, flop is K89rainbow BB checks to me. Given that I've got no reads on the BB both checking and better are viable options. I opted to bet to get value from worse Kx hands, 8x 9x and TT-QQ. Anyway villain check raises 3x my bet, I obviously just call as I don't want to fold and re-raising achieves nothing. Turn is a Jack, at this point I'm praying that BB checks the turn, as I'd probably just have to fold and hate life. Thankfully he did and I was able to check back the turn as well to see the river which was something meaningless like a 4. Again he checks to me, at this point I was pretty sure I had the best hand so I put in around a 1/2 pot value bet, he tanked for a bit and called with KT. There was some serious button clicking going on with his flop play.
Over the next few levels my stack dwindled down to around 17k (20-25bbs) after moving tables I manged to get a double up pretty quickly after squeezing with KK and check shoving a T9xm board and holding Vs QT. It wasn't long after this that the table maniac (Ali Malu) limped UTG, I iso'd with AJ flop was J96tt, he donk bet. Given that we were only about 45-50bbs deep I decided to play for stacks. He'd previously back raised AI with T2s from the SB after BB squeezed an UTG open and was playing super loose and bad. I was obviously very happy playing for stacks as against his stacking off range I'd estimate that I probably had around 70+% equity. Sadly he'd owned me with 99 and I was sent to the rail aka the bar.
Afer my tournament exit, I played a little £1/£2 cash, I didn't play great and lost my initial £360 pretty quickly. I spent rest of the day chilling/sulking in the bar and railing the others. Sunday was much the same, I wasn't in the mood for playing any cash so I entered a £160 turbo in an attempt to satellite into the £1600 high roller tournament scheduled for the evening. Half the reason I entered was to kill time, I really should have thought about what 'turbo' implied because I was out the tournament after about 20 minutes lol..............so much for killing time. I wasn't until late on Sunday that some of the others busted out the tournament, we stayed at the poker club railing BrotherM, Mr Niceness and Paul until play stopped which must have been around 12-1am.
I decided to play a little 0.5/£1 cash on Monday while the others batteled it out for a seat on the final table, the cash game was pretty fun with multiple straddles. I managed to make around a £300 profit, which kind of made up for my poor £1/£2 performance. The rest of the day was spent railing, it was pretty exciting as I obviously had a vested interest in 3 of the final 20, BrotherM was eventually knocked out in 5th by the table nit who somehow managed to wake up with KK BvB when Will open shoved K9. We didn't stick around for long as it was pretty late and I had a 200mile drive back to Brighton. We made it back in a little over 3 hours in time to catch the rest of the DTD stream, the final HU match was pretty funny as both players were awful and hated each other. The fact that both were so bad just goes to show how much luck plays a part in these live tournaments and any tournament for that matter.
I had a really good weekend, I was pretty happy with how I played in the main event and got to met some interesting people. There's still a lot I can do to improve my live game, some of this should come with experience. I'm going to try and make it out to Ireland for the WPT, the buy ins more than I'd like so I expect I'll sell some action.
I've not put in much volume cashgame wise this month, but it's gone pretty well so far, I'll leave you with a photoshop I did a few weeks back when I'd been watching a lot of Man Vs Food. Gl all.
My tournament run didn't last too long, I got off to a good start hitting 42k in chips within the first level (30k starting stacks). I won a decent pot early on during the first level. I'd been reasonably active, and open AKo from the CO, folds to BB who 3bets me. Given that we're 300bbs deep and I have position I don't really see any point in 4 betting it. I flat, flop is K89rainbow BB checks to me. Given that I've got no reads on the BB both checking and better are viable options. I opted to bet to get value from worse Kx hands, 8x 9x and TT-QQ. Anyway villain check raises 3x my bet, I obviously just call as I don't want to fold and re-raising achieves nothing. Turn is a Jack, at this point I'm praying that BB checks the turn, as I'd probably just have to fold and hate life. Thankfully he did and I was able to check back the turn as well to see the river which was something meaningless like a 4. Again he checks to me, at this point I was pretty sure I had the best hand so I put in around a 1/2 pot value bet, he tanked for a bit and called with KT. There was some serious button clicking going on with his flop play.
Over the next few levels my stack dwindled down to around 17k (20-25bbs) after moving tables I manged to get a double up pretty quickly after squeezing with KK and check shoving a T9xm board and holding Vs QT. It wasn't long after this that the table maniac (Ali Malu) limped UTG, I iso'd with AJ flop was J96tt, he donk bet. Given that we were only about 45-50bbs deep I decided to play for stacks. He'd previously back raised AI with T2s from the SB after BB squeezed an UTG open and was playing super loose and bad. I was obviously very happy playing for stacks as against his stacking off range I'd estimate that I probably had around 70+% equity. Sadly he'd owned me with 99 and I was sent to the rail aka the bar.
Afer my tournament exit, I played a little £1/£2 cash, I didn't play great and lost my initial £360 pretty quickly. I spent rest of the day chilling/sulking in the bar and railing the others. Sunday was much the same, I wasn't in the mood for playing any cash so I entered a £160 turbo in an attempt to satellite into the £1600 high roller tournament scheduled for the evening. Half the reason I entered was to kill time, I really should have thought about what 'turbo' implied because I was out the tournament after about 20 minutes lol..............so much for killing time. I wasn't until late on Sunday that some of the others busted out the tournament, we stayed at the poker club railing BrotherM, Mr Niceness and Paul until play stopped which must have been around 12-1am.
I decided to play a little 0.5/£1 cash on Monday while the others batteled it out for a seat on the final table, the cash game was pretty fun with multiple straddles. I managed to make around a £300 profit, which kind of made up for my poor £1/£2 performance. The rest of the day was spent railing, it was pretty exciting as I obviously had a vested interest in 3 of the final 20, BrotherM was eventually knocked out in 5th by the table nit who somehow managed to wake up with KK BvB when Will open shoved K9. We didn't stick around for long as it was pretty late and I had a 200mile drive back to Brighton. We made it back in a little over 3 hours in time to catch the rest of the DTD stream, the final HU match was pretty funny as both players were awful and hated each other. The fact that both were so bad just goes to show how much luck plays a part in these live tournaments and any tournament for that matter.
I had a really good weekend, I was pretty happy with how I played in the main event and got to met some interesting people. There's still a lot I can do to improve my live game, some of this should come with experience. I'm going to try and make it out to Ireland for the WPT, the buy ins more than I'd like so I expect I'll sell some action.
I've not put in much volume cashgame wise this month, but it's gone pretty well so far, I'll leave you with a photoshop I did a few weeks back when I'd been watching a lot of Man Vs Food. Gl all.
