Nottingham UKIPT TP and more Wonga related news

I got back on Monday from the Nottingham UKIPT held at the Dusk Till Dawn Poker Room. As most of you probably know a £1 million prize pool had been guaranteed for the tournament, pretty good a buy in of £770. Win the huge prize pool and relatively cheap buy in it was no surprise that there was a large turnout for the event with a total of 3 day 1s it was going to be a long tournament............well not for me anyway. 

Being somewhat organised I'd registered for Day 1c (Friday) about a month in advance which was good as it soon became apparent that it would sell out. I drove Myself, Si and Will up on Thursday afternoon, we arrived in good time and booked into our hotel before heading out for some food with Todd Swain  aka ToddSwain of PKR (2nd in Masters fame). After a very mediocre Frankie and Bennys we headed to a studenty/hipster bar for some drinks, it was here we met fellow PKR player JJBird after several pints we decided to call it a night and like true professionals we headed back to the hotel for some sleep before the big day. 

After yet another mediocre Frankie and Bennys we arrived at DTD were I managed to find my table and get seated. It was the usual mix of people, I had position on a middle aged woman whom I learnt was staking a load of people in the tourney she clearly played a lot of these live events but generally played pretty tight and very straight forward. One of the better players at the table was a live cashgame player, from what I gather he plays a lot of £5/10, I was told by a friend who's played with him that he will do some werid stuff. He didn't disappoint and ended up shoving around 15bbs with 76s from MP Vs UTG+1 min raise open with about 5 players still to act. I don't really see how this can be profitable given the number of players still in the hand and the fact that it was a min-raise with no antees so even when he takes the pot down pre he doesn't win much. As it happened I was sitting there with AK and was pretty happy reshoving, my hand held to knock him out. 

I think it was after this hand that I reached my tournament peak of around 18k in chips and with starting stacks of 15k it's pretty obvious I never got up and running. I'm not really happy with how I played, I made several pretty bad mistakes, the worst was probably trying to value bet a weak overpair Vs the woman staker, as soon as I bet I remember thinking 'Don't call!!!!' not the best thing to be thinking when you're trying to value bet. She ended up calling with a slightly better overpair. WP me. My eventual exit hand was a pretty standard spot where I squeeze called a shove with AK for around 20bbs and lost to Jacks. 

After my standard cooling off period and a couple of drinks I begrudgingly joined a £1/2 table with £300. I wasn't really in the mood for cash but as everyone else I was with was either still in the tournament or grinding cash it was my only option besides hitting up the pit games. Given that I'm the least degen poker player in the world and don't really enjoy pit games (or gambling for that matter) I opted for the cashgames. I still have real issues with live cash, firstly I get bored pretty quickly and secondly it always feels like I'm playing for loads of money. I play considerably higher stakes online but loosing money live always seems to hurt so much more, I guess it's because I don't feel detached from the money like I do online.

My brief stint of cash went pretty well, I won a £600 pot when I flopped a set in a 3 way 3bet pot with 22 on a AJ2hhh, I opted to lead flop as I think the initial 3 bettor would pot control with a lot of his Ax hands. The turn and  river were perfect for me with the board running out AJ2hhhA8 I just lead flop+turn and shoved river, the guy tanked for a bit before calling, I don't really see many live players folding trips here. I managed to build a stack of around £750 by winning a few small pots before I 3 bet sqeezed and called a short stacks shove with AQ only to get in against KK. I was happy to end my cash session with around a £300 profit when Si busted out knowing that he'd need my support at the bar. That was the last of my poker for the weekend as myself and Will took the opportunity on Saturday to visit old Uni friends in Sheffield.

The UKIPT weekend was good fun it didn't even feel like I lost any money as I'd bought into the tournament several weeks in advance, this is definitely something I'm going to do in the future as it really takes the sting out of it when you (inevitably) bust. 

In online news, my tourney run continued when I won the Wednesday night High Roller after really WORKING the 2nd place guy. Cash games have been going pretty well I've been hitting up the 2/4 games on Ongame and it's looking like this will be the first time in months where I end up playing more 2/4+ than 1/2. 

I'll leave you with a hand I played yesterday during a HU session Vs an old PKR reg.

PKRreg ($1,993)
WongaMan ($2,158)

WongaMan posts (SB) $5
PKRreg posts (BB) $10

Dealt to WongaMan

WongaMan raises to $20
PKRreg raises to $80
WongaMan raises to $195
PKRreg raises to $485
WongaMan calls $290

FLOP ($970) 

 

PKRreg bets $1,508 (AI)
WongaMan calls $1,508

TURN ($3,987)  
 

RIVER ($3,987) 

PKRreg shows

WongaMan (sheepishly) shows

PKRreg wins $3,986

I'm pretty happy with how I played the hand given the game dynamics, he was down around 2-3 buyins at time I'd 4 bet around 3 times each time winning the hand either pre or with a Cbet on the flop. I know he flats 4 bets fairly wide hence the 4 bet, given the stack sizes and the dynamic I felt flatting is small 5 bet was fine. I felt the overbet shove on the flop was more likely to be a draw or just straight air as surely he'd want to give me some room to shove a draw if he had a strong hand. Anyway as John Locke would say........