My buddy Jay from Connecticut and I went to AC on Friday to play in a tournament or two, then hit the cash games. We decided to play the Hilton $40+$10. This tournament has become one of my favorite small tourneys in AC, compared to the Showboat tourney I usually play. They changed their structure around way too much and I hate it. For 40 bucks you only get 3k in chips but they give you 30 min levels. You don't have to get creative at all, as you'll see, and you're usually looking at 7-800 for first. The first level Jay was chipping up nicely. I was limping a lot, not picking up anything special but trying to hit a hand. There was this old guy in between Jay and I who was the absolute worst player alive. He was calling all ins with 23 and 62 and bottom pair and so on. The problem was he was hitting lol. He sent the first 6 people from our table to the rail. Thank god they kept the table intact though.
Santa(old guy) was making ridiculous pre-flop raises. His high was 50-100 blinds and he made it 2100 to go from utg+1. I was dieing. The first real hand I got into was when Santa made it 800 to go pf with the same blinds and got a cold call from another terrible player. I was in the bb and looked down to see JJ. With 1650 in the pot and most likely had the other 2 players ranges crushed, it was an easy decision to just shove for 2875 total. Santa folded and it was over to the cold caller who went into the tank for like 2 minutes. He finally called off 90% of his stack with A4. My JJ held and I was up to like 6300.
The rest of the time I kind of forget, which means it was pretty uneventful. I do remember a girl shoving for like 1100 with blinds 200/400 and I had Kings which was an easy scoop. Other than that, I just don't remember. Jay and I did make it to the Final Table with only 5 paying. There was only 62 people entered. We both only had in the range of 5-10 bb's so we had some work to do. 2 people went out pretty quick and we were down to 8 players. Jay and I were playing the shove any 2 game when it got around to us. I decided to let myself blind down to a point, which online you certainly cant do because the blinds are so low. In this live situation, it's such a significant portion of some peoples stacks to call off. So you can get away with shoving any 2 a lot easier. There was a 4 way limped pot with 1k-2k blinds and I was in the bb with 35hh. The flop came 4h 7h 9c. I just shoved for my last 4k and got everyone to fold. Jay doubled up before the break to 20k so he was in OK position.
With blinds passing me once by and not being able to shove because of all-ins in front of me, I was down to 4600 or so chips. I shoved utg+1 with K6 and got called blind in the bb which is standard for only 2600 more. He had 10-7 and I held to double up to about 9k. The next hand I had A4dd and shoved for 9600 or so. The same guy called and said he got me this time. He flipped KK and we're off to the races weeeee lol. I spiked an Ace on the river and left the guy crippled. I was disgusted it had to come on the river for him, but I didn't feel bad about winning. It's just a sick game we play. That put me a lil over 21k.
Now we come to 1 of the hands that I would like a comment or two on what you guys would have done. We are now on the money bubble. 6 people left and 5 pay. Jay was in the bb and the guy that I sucked out on had 8500 chips left with 2k-4k blinds with a $500 ante. Here's how the action went
UTG(8500)
MP(25K ish)
Me(22k)
UTG shoves 8500 all in
MP shoves all in for 25k ish
Me - looks down to see AK - What do you do?
This is one of those times where it might be OK to lay this hand down. For some background info UTG was steaming from all the suck outs hes had on him(I only did it once). He should be pushing almost any 2 here. MP is an older, tight player. He knew what he was doing though and played pretty well. If UTG's hand holds and I don't improve against MP then I bubble in 6th. If UTG holds and I beat MP then I'll be sitting at about 30k after I pay off UTG. If I win it altogether, I'm sitting at roughly 60k after blinds and antes and most likely will win the tournament. I decided to call. Hands looked like this when flipped up.
UTG - JT
MP - 99
Me- AK
Neither my hand or UTG were able to hit and MP even made a flush when he didn't need to, to win the hand. So I was out in 5th place for $156. I was surprised to see I was that live. I took a little way to think it through and when I tabled AK everyone gave me an astonished look asking why I took so long. I really didn't want to play for 5 hours and have nothing to show for it, but $780 looks way better than $156 so I made the call. What can I say, I play to win. I could have picked another spot to shove against 2 weak players to my left and chip up. What can you do though. 6 handed I'll take my chances. Jay eventually wound up getting 2nd for about $460. And yep you guessed it, the guy who won the 3 way pot to knock me out won it all.
We grabbed something to eat over at the Trop for some reason then headed over to Borgata to play some cash games and watch the Yanks vs Sox. God only knows why but they didn't have the game on. We got on the list and they opened a new table up. I was surprised to see that Max buy in was $300. Jay and I both bought in for $200 though. There was 3 guys at the table who got into it on the 2nd hand. There was no raise pre flop and 4 players saw a flop of
8c Ad Jc
1st Pos bets $15
2nd Pos folds
3rd Pos calls $15
4th Pos calls $15
Turn 8c Ad Jc [3c]
1st Pos bets $25
3rd Pos raises $50 to $75
4th Pos cold calls $75
1st Pos calls $50
River 8c Ad Jc 3c [7c]
1st Pos shoves all-in for $93
3rd Pos calls $93
4th Pos calls $93
1st Pos shows Ac 9d for the nut flush
3rd Pos shows Kc 5c for the 2nd nut flush
4th Pos shows Ah Qc for the 3rd nut flush
After seeing this hand I was licking my chops to get involved in some pots with these guys. 1st Pos was bad. 3rd Pos, the guy had on a diamond baller watch, I was 2 to his right so I couldn't tell if it was fake or not. I was guessing that he was there with his buddy to just goof around. Later he flopped a boat with 27 in the bb only to get rivered by a bigger boat against a guy who had k2. Live poker is so rigged. I posted this hand to give some background on the next hand I would like to have comments on. I got involved in a hand with the 4th Pos player. Now he hadn't raised any pot in about 40 hands. He was utg and opened to $15. Surprisingly everyone folded over to me and I looked down at QQ. I decided to just call to see what the flop would bring and how he would react. Everyone folded and we went to the flop.
Flop 10s 6s 5s
With $30 dollars in the pot the guy open shoves for $103 and all-in. He was one of those guys who thought poker was about ego and didn't like to get bullied around, but wanted to do the bullying. What range do you put him on here. I doubt he does this with a made flush. He does this with AA KK QQ JJ TT, your broad way cards with a high suited spade such as As k,q,j,. Or even certainly less than that given his previous hand. What do you do in this spot? I gave it a call and the board went
Turn 10s 6s 5s [Kd]
River 10s 6s 5s Kd [9h]
I thought I was toast on the turn, but flipped up my QQ first. He showed his hand to Jay and I knew I was good. He then flipped up Js Jh to the rest of the table, said nh, then left. Against this given player I think a call was OK. Against some other people I could have been in really bad shape. In retrospect, this hand is totally player dependent I believe. I ended the night up $225 in cash. After gas I made out with about $350. This post is long enough already, tomorrow I'll write about the May recap, Saturday's Home game, and some goals for June.
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