Poker :: La turnamentus tres terriblus

Next lesson - how not to play in cheap live tournaments.

Venue: Reval Olympic

Event: Saturday night $8R

Ok specialty of this tournament is small field (4-5 tables), so unlimited rebuy strategy doesnt work automatically since prize pools are small. Next point is that there are usually two kinds of players - the ones who doesnt care about $8, "easy going" and playing just for fun, and the ones who don't even allow themselves to get the instarebuy at the beginning of the tourney, or the knit ones. There is also third kind - or, really, the one of the third kind - the unique Jesus Ferguson look-a-like type of guy who just splashes around ALL the time by moving in without looking down at the cards for 10 times in a row for example.

My starting table this time included all the good easygoing, couple of knits, MariusLT (who sat directly on my right), and that famous maniac. By the way, recently he played $20R sattelite for a $400 tourney, spent about $600 in rebuys and left before the end of the rebuy period... This is just to illustrate how he plays :)

So first hand, I'm utg+1, have 55, and my friend UTG raises to 120. Well, what a sucker - I know maniac will reraise (he never calls a raise - smoothlimp, or reraise are his only moves:) So I folded, maniac raised to 500, friend called. Flop 45J, friend check, maniac allin, friend call, showdown - A2 vs AT... So this is how its going the first 1.5hours :)

Few hands later got 79s, 6 players in the pot, flop QQ7. Eventually me and maniac were allin at the end of the hand and I lost vs his Q2o - cmon, what are the chances that noone out of 5 other players doesn't hold a queen?.. Pure horror.

Out of two real hands I had during rebuy was AA utg, and I limped - what the f***, maniac ALWAYS reraises a raise. So I had 5 callers again, and was lucky to get J73 rainbow flop, so safely took it down.

Lost quadrupled stack with JJ vs good players AQ vs maniacs blind push T5o after Q fell on the flop. All in all after rebuy period I had just the starting stack - double rebuy and addon :)

After rebuy period ended just was not very lucky - took blinds with LP raises, but when limped 45s after 3 other limpers on the button, BB woke up with smth and raised big. I folded (would need to invest 30% of the stack to see the flop) after BB got two callers, and flop came 236...

At blinds 200/400 and a 2400 stack repushed limper with A7s, got caller from the blinds and the initial limper, and was lucky to triple up on T7442 smth board.

Pulled out one nice kind of bluff when had 46s button+1, and BB was short. There was small EP raise that I didn't notice, so I just announced a raise to steal the blinds. And put in 2000 chips (blinds were 300/600). Then dealer said I cant raise that amount, since EP raise was 1400. So I was forced to miniraise him to 2800. Blinds folded and EP raiser threw his KQ away and left himself only 4k to play. Niiiice, my table image must be very tight/solid after those few first tournaments when I just hit set after set after fullhouse :)

Later doubled up repushing loose UTG raiser with TT, and got called by A8o. Had ~12k in chips at that point.

My friend did several extremely stoooopid things very good to learn from. For example, he got involved in big 3way pot, and on the river had the best hand with ATo on KTxxx board, but at the showdown showed only the ten, and pushed the ace face down over the line - so its a ruled fold. So instead of 15k he dropped to 5k stack. Later he busted with AA vs 77 allin pre when sevens catched a four flush :)

My ugliest mistakes came when we left two tables 6 players each. My table draw was very weak, with no one raising preflop. I had JJ in SB, and there was a raise and minireraise ahead of me. Clear fold, and good one, since they got it in QQ vs KK allin pre. Next hand there's only a limp, so I push the button not even looking into the cards (well, i looked, but it was J7o:) Everybody folded. At that point I sit on 13k stack with blinds 600/1200, avg stack ~18k (couple of huge chipleaders). Also, told my friends that when I will be in BB, im pushing any two if there are only limps in the pot. The BB came, had QTo, and got 3(!!!) limpers and SB completed. And I checked for some reason. What the hell, its 5k already in the pot - what hands those limpers would need to risk their stacks to call 12k more when invested just 1k so far? Terribe terrible check on my side - I suddenly thought QTo is good enough to see the flop, but cmon, its 5way... Flop came 67T rainbow, I led out for 2k with intention to shut down if get any resistance. Got one caller, everybody else folded. I checked his stack, and saw only 700 left, so pushed any turn (that was an ace). Suddenly he showed 3 1k chips behind his arm and called my allin with 89 for a flopped straight. So suddenly I sat on M less than 2 and busted few hands later.

Thats few small episodes how you do not play tournaments live :) Stick to the plan. Don't do stupid things. Don't splash. Trust your instincts. And with final table approaching, use that fold equity you have like there is no tomorrow:)

End of story.