Poker :: WCP, PlatinumVIP and OlympicLive

Lots of poker last weekend :) Firstly, there was WorldCup of Poker national satelites. Couple of friends moved in my place for those two days and we had some good time busting one after another out of these events. As you can see we all played in one room, and most interestingly, 3 of us were at the same starting table in the first satelite, so obviously some mega collusion was going on =) One hand was particularly fun, where one of friends held QJhearts, I held ace of hearts + some rag in BB, and then turn gave my friend straight flush, and river gave me ace high flush. So we talked for a while how should we play it out since I was first to bet. I led out my A high flush (board not paired) for 60 (blinds 15/30), then my friend with straight flush raised to 120, and I called it - awesome trick, and most funny was that the table didnt react bad on the showdown - it was only "Wow nhs" in chatbox, but nothing about such an obvious soft playing :) That shows overall level of these tourneys - 85% players were from micro limits or even freerollers, so maybe there's nothing to wonder about :) All in all, we didnt manage to plow through the field to the final table thus didnt get to national final. My better atempt was ~40th smth out of ~125 starters.

Oy! Collusion!!!

Continuing with online poker - or the oh-so-boring cash games - I finally finished grinding the PlatinumVIP which I wanted only to order 600pc clay chipset. At the end I demonstrated extremely bad poker and donked off quite big portion of my bankroll :) My new bankroll target might be cursed - 3 times I was less than 2 buyins short of it, and all three times dropped to more than 10 buyins away :) I was in same situation ~8 months ago when I tried to hit 2k bankroll to start playing "safe" NL100 - which really isnt "safe" as I understand it now :) When got bored from cash I signed for one afternoon tourney - $10 rebuy. Ended up buying in for $100 total (bad luck in rebuy period, although managed to get to 11k chips at the end afterall), and went quite deep. Busted in 23th place out of ~650, and was extremely dissapointed with my late tourney stage play... I did let Q high bluff get away at the showdown (I held 4high with missed straight draws;) , called a button shove with 79s in BB for 40% of my stack - what the hell I was thinking Im not sure even now, and then finally busted by shoving solid big stack UTG raise with KQs - I still had 8 BB and think might have found a better spot for putting all my chips in... Ended up vs QQ and lost. First few places paid quite nice (5.5k for first), and 23th was only enough to cover my buyin and a few beers after the tourney :)

Ace-rag players ;)

And since there is a break in sports season, on Saturday night we all (guys from the photos) moved to Reval Olympic for that cheapass $8 rebuy to practice some live poker. The only bad thing was that my head was hurting like hell from the lack of sleep and lack of food so I kinda waited for this tourney to finish better sooner than later. But despite these pathetic whines we moved to the Olympic, and yet again we all 4 drew the same starting table. Other guys at the table was already known ROCK (after action shows down only AA, KK or set, nothing worse) which is easy to exploit, then three older guys, one of which named "Maradona" for some unknown reason, and another dude who just came back from WSOP and was just relaxing and having fun at the table, constantly siting out, playing slot machines, and asking waitresses for free coffee (all tournament players get free coffee, drinks, and sweets:) In the first levels all the game was revolving around these older dudes, with me being card dead and donking one allin KJo vs ATo allin pre. After rebuying I kept being card dead, and just before rebuy period ended I won a big pot with a Q9o bluff vs AKs on the river and thus was slightly up. Later doubled up trough WSOP guy with AKs vs TJo on KTrag flop, won few other pots, and then we were down to two tables. Seeing few shorties at that table I kept raising LP and took few blinds uncontested. Then split allin vs shortie with AQo vs 78s, board went 769-8-5 :) With 12 players left and average M of 8 I was up and down calling a button shove and losing KTo vs ATs; then reshoving from BB MP raiser and sucking out ATo vs QQ (KTT-x-x). Later won nice pot by limping UTG 99 and getting BB to put in few bets on worse flopped pair. Too bad my luck ran out with 5ppl left, when I called Maradona's (SB) openshove for all his chips (we had nearly same stacks) - I felt he was tilty after losing commanding chip lead and I instacalled from BB with ATo, happened to be against JTo, and board ran Q7T-8-9... So I busted 5th with 5places paid for a small profit and 2 out of 2 cash record for my live tourneys :) Respect goes to "dariusn" who rejected prize split with 3 players left and managed to take it down without having had any HU experience :) Tourney summary for our "team" - 4 entrants, 4 to final table, 2 cashes, 1 winner :)