Bar Tourney

Well, I found a bar close to the house was starting a couple of freeroll tournaments on Monday and Tuesday nights. (http://www.valleylounge.com). I went in last Friday to try and get some information. The bartender didn't know anything about it. Some guy at the bar had some sketchy details. The tournaments are Monday and Tuesday nights at 8 and 10 PM. I went on Monday to check it out. I got to the bar around 7:15 ordered a beer and asked the bartender (a different one) about the tournament. He said he didn't know anything about it either but the guy running it in the back was the one to ask. So I finished my smoke and went to sign up. The tournament was in fact free. Each player started with 40 chips with each chip being the same denomination. Blinds started at 1/2 doubling every 15 minutes with the last round being 32/64! I didn't get any details what the payouts were at the time though. So I sign up and wait until 8.

I get my seat assignment which was table 1. We picked our own seats though. Interesting already. I sit with my back against the wall in the middle of the table about where the dealer would normally sit. I'm more comfortable there anyway. The tournament starts with 28 or 29 players, our table is 9 handed. The players deal themself, not too strange for a freeroll at a bar. I had one guy at my table that didn't know how to play at all. I guess being caught up in the poker craze and all the TV coverage now I figured everyone knew how to play. I guess not, but its not a big deal, everyone is really there to have fun anway and I hope the guy did. My table is full of loose, passive calling stations. Great if you get some hands, bad if you don't. I think only a couple of them knew how to fold a hand. No one really knew how a tournament was supposed to run so I tried to steer the table correctly. I think I may have aggravated a few people but I was friendly about it and tried to get the table to play as correctly as was possible. First hand I play I get AQ with 1 limper behind me. I just make it 6 to go and get a couple of callers. Flop is all rags, I bet out 1/2 pot which is about 1/3 of my stack with the low starting chips. I get one caller, the rest fold. Turn is another rag, I decide to check because this guy could have really been playing any two, especially if they were soooted. He bets out min, 2 chips. The pot now is around 40 so getting 20:1 I decide to call. Plus with the weak bet there was a strong possibility my Ace high was good. River is a Ten or something, I check and the player behind me checks. I show my AQ and he shows KJo so my ace high was good. A little while later people are getting short. I get dealt pp7 in the sb with the blinds 2/4 I think. Two limpers and the button goes all-in for his last five chips. I just call and the other limpers call so we are 4 handed with 1 all-in. Flop is 33x, checked around. The turn is a very ugly Ace but its checked around again. The river bring a very pretty seven giving me the boat. I check it though and the first limper bets eight which the second limper calls. I of course want to reraise here but how much? Will I get one caller with a big bet or can I get them both to call with smaller raise? I raise 10 more hoping both will call. The first better immediatly calls and the other lady folds. Dang, I think the first guy would have called anything! I show my boat and he shows his paired Ace and the all-in guy shows his ppKs and I take down a very nice pot. Play goes on for a while and I take down a few smaller pots. The blinds are now at 8/16 when we make the final table. There are two empty seats between myself and the guy that had just posted the BB. Well, two guys get moved into those seats. Normally they would sit out until I got the button but they didn't do it that way. I tried explaining to the organizer but it fell on deaf ears. Of course this ended up being a disadvantage for me because by the time the BB got to me the blinds increased to 16/32. Luckily I got AQ and pushed and took out a guy. Still not the right way to do it. One lady that got moved to our table played any two for any amount. She had a boatload of chips when she got to our table so she must have sucked out on more than one person. On one hand at the final table I'm sitting at about 350 in chips and get AQ again and push. The guy with a stack immediatly to my left decide to call and everyone else folds. He shows 78o and I just have him covered so he is gone. We get down to 4 handed and I find out what the payouts are, 4th: tshirt, 6pack of miller lite and $5 in gift certificats at the bar. 3rd is the same except you get $10 in gift certificats, 2nd same but $20 in gift certificates and first is the same but $40 in gift certificates. Early on 4 handed I get dealt AK or something, the lady that plays any two limps in as does the guy to my right. Since noone is really over 10x bb with the blinds at 32/64 and I know any two lady will call I push, she calls as does the guy on my right. We turn them over and anytwo lady has 74 soooted and the guy has pp9s, which I didn't want to see but I'll take the race. I hit my ace and take out two players so we are heads up. I have this guy severly outchipped as he barely has 1.5x BB and I have the rest of the chips. Its getting close to 9:30 when we have to be done so he goes all-in in the dark and I call in the dark. As my night was going I get ppJs vs. his 83o. He doesn't suckout and I win! It was very nice to win a live tourney. The organizer said he would be posting the pic he took of me on some website and would email me the address. When that happens, I'll post it.

Well that was a long winded post for today. take care!

meh

Not much going on but I haven't updated in a few days. Poker is going well. The mentor course is pretty much at an end. The last assignment is to play normal using what we have learned over the course. I have been pretty unlucky though. I think my play has been good but the fish are hitting. When someone calls an all-in with an ace on the board and they have nothing but a flush draw and hit, what can you do. This is what I want but its frustrating when they suck out. Oh well. Like I said, I like my play, just not the results.

Brat Camp

Not much poker wise again last night. I played on tournament where I did a lesson. I was getting shortstacked and pushed on a Q55 flop with QJ thinking I was facing an overpair, I was, the other person had ppKs, end of the tournament.

I was kind of distracted last night by a show on ABC called "Brat Camp." http://abc.go.com/primetime/bratcamp/index.html I have no idea if this is a new show or has been on a while since I don't watch much television anymore. Anyway this show is filled with "problem" kids. Their parents send them to a place called SageWalk I think. The idea behind SageWalk is that they take them out into the wilderness where they have to camp and survive for at least 60 days or something like that. This isn't a Survivor type show where they have to scrounge for everything but they do have to take care of their camp, get ready by a certain time, etc. It was actually a pretty good show. All these kids think they are badasses. Then they have to do a 7 mile hike with a 40 lb pack and they are all whining like a bunch of pansies. Anyway, this might be a show worth watching. In the two hours it was on last night you could already start to see changes in some of the kids. Hopefully it will help them deal with whatever issues they have.

Five Stand

Well, one of my other interests is in the shooting sports. I'm not real good but it is a fun thing to do. On Tuesday nights I shoot in a league for Five Stand. For those that don't know Five Stand is like sporting clays but you don't have to walk through the woods. There are eight trap boxes that launch a bird. One is a straight up teal, one comes from behind, one straight across, one rabbit about 15 yds in front of you, you get the idea. For whatever reason the one that comes straight across has been giving me problems as of late. I don't think I'm leading the bird anywhere near enough. The other one I can never hit is that blasted rabbit! Of course this "rabbit" goes 15ft in the air. Sort of a flying squirrel type thing then a rabbit. Its a fast, difficult shot. Every once in a while I hit it though and I did last night! yay! We had a bet going with the other's shooting on the rabbit. On the first round I had to pay out $2 (big money, no?) and I got handicapped a bird on the second round and made $2 so I was even on the night. I shoot a 15 year old Remington 870 Express. Its an ok gun that still works after 15 years of abuse so I can't knock it too much. But I have been shooting terrible with it lately. Last night I shot only an 8 with it (out of 25 possible). Then I borrowed my friends over/under and shot a 16. Quite an improvement! I guess I need to look into getting a new gun as I shot a 15 with that same shotgun a few weeks ago. Although the over/under is a little heavier, its shorter and I can swing it faster. It also fits me a lot better so I get a better sight picture down the barrel. Hopefully the poker hobby will help pay for the shooting hobby!

On the poker front I did another lesson last night. I didn't win this one but I think I played well considering I had to see every flop for the first 50 hands. I made it to around hand 40 when I busted. The hand that hurt me I got dealt ATh and limped in, according to the lesson. There were a few more limpers, then the SB came in for a pot size raise. According to the lesson I could proceed as I saw fit. Well the SB only raised big like that when he had a small/mid pair so even though I would normally fold this hand, I decided to play it. Just the two of us saw the flop of A3x. The SB checked to me and I bet out 1/2 pot, the SB calls. The turn was another rag, SB check, I bet 1/2 again, SB calls again (something smells fishy here doesn't it?). River brought another rag, SB checks again and I'm done putting anymore money in this hand as I figure he has hit or I have misread him and he has a better Ace. I don't want to get check raised here so I check as well. He turns over his pp3 for a flopped set and I muck. Normally it wouldn't have been an issue losing this hand but since I had to see every flop and the blinds were getting more expensive it wasn't a good hand to lose. A while later I bluffed at a 2k pot with my last 3k (blinds at 100/200 and about to increase) when it gets checked around to me on a 984 ragged flop. I had the powerhouse of T4 but noone was showing any interest in the pot. Well, I get called by ATo and bust. Not that my play was spectacular on this hand but why would you check/call with ATo when you have no part of the board? Funny thing about doing this assignment is that I am forced to play a lot of junk, but a lot of people play the same junk willingly. This lesson has definitly helped my post flop play though and its been fun thus far.

Season Tickets

Oh yeah, I got my Minnesota Vikings Season Tickets in the mail Saturday! That means the season is right around the corner!! I'm excited for this year as we have added some defense and things are looking good on paper. I won't make a judgement until I see them on the field but hopes are high. Of course I veiw the world through purple glasses so I'm usually optomistic this time of year anyway!

Skol!

Tired

As usual when I try this sort of stuff I haven't updated in over a month. This doesn't bode well as I just started. I ended up bubbling in the Big One Live Tour final which sucked. I doubled Clay http://www.clayftknight.com again. I didn't need to win the hand, yet I played it and lost anyway. Lesson learned I guess.

Aaron's mentoring program is going well. I haven't had the time to do as much as I would like with summer being here and all but it has definitly helped me out. I'll probably take some private lessons from him down the line. After we finish up in the next couple of weeks I'm just going to play some poker. It will be nice to not have to do any lessons!

I finally opened an account at Full Tilt. I highly recommend this site for anyone looking for a place to play. The SnG structures are nice. You start out with 1500 and the blinds go up slowly so you can actually play poker. And there is actually some post-flop play involved. Its quite a novel concept that other sites should look at employing. I don't know if I like their interface or graphics but that's just the covering so I can deal with it.

I won the 10:00 P.M. NLHE PSOC last night. I haven't done too well in these since I usually am doing lessons while playing them and not playing to win. Funny thing is that for the first 70 hands or so I was doing a lesson. Once I got to that point I was able to play how I wanted. Through some really good reads and aggressive play during the lesson I had built a stack. I carried that momentum with me and controlled my table for a long while. Then I ran into a couple of raises where I either had to call with the mediocre cards I was stealing with due to odds or lay down the hand to an all-in. We got down to three players with the chipleader having an almost 5:1 lead on both me and the guy in third place. I played some good poker and when it got down to heads up I started out by winning as many small pots as I could. Then the defining hand of the HU I got dealt ppT. I raised, the big stack reraised me, so I pushed and he called, turning over K8d. He hit an 8 on the flop but nothing else and now I was in the chip lead and never relented. I let a few hands go here and there as I didn't want him to win any big pots, only small ones if he was going to win anything. I was happy with how I played outside of a few things. The only problem is that I got to bed around 1:45 AM and couldn't fall asleep until sometime after 2:30 The alarm clock didn't have much sympathy for me though and went off at 5:20 to wake up my wife right on time.

Well, here's hoping you flop the nuts and that I will have more consistent posts!

Chris