ITH Poker Forum

[jfletcher]

Yes, my first live tourney win (excluding two that were chopped heads-up). It was the Venetian $120 buyin 7 pm 2nd chance tourney tonight. I took home $2673.

I'm too tired right now to go into a long report on the tourney, so here's the reader's digest version.

I am in Vegas for work, actually. I'm doing a story on this 17 year old kid who skipped his final two years of high school so he could play junior college baseball and be eligible for the major league draft early. Anyway, he's awesome. And he lives in Vegas.

So I got done with my work this afternoon and went to the Venetian. I was debating actually playing at the Wynn, because their 8 pm tourney has a better structure, but the buyin is $250. I opted against it, because I also knew the Venetian cash games were probably better for me (1-2 instead of 1-3).

Anyway, I sat tight early, then built the biggest stack at the table with a few big hands. Pocket aces. AK vs AQ. I took down a few with well-timed bets (but I turned my preflop raising down a notch from my normal I'd-better-try-to-steal-the-blinds-every-other-orbit).

My stack then melted more toward average as I had to abandon a few hands. I was actually proud of myself that I managed to work my bet-sizing right so I could take reasonable stabs at pots, but leave myself enough chips to get away if I was clearly beaten.

Just kept floating around as we got toward the bubble. (Oh forgot, there were 103 players, and 13 were paid.) Anyway, when we were down to about 20, I had the most interesting of the tourney.

I'm the SB, and the BB was a pretty tight short stack. UTG was a huge stack who I'd played with for a long time. I knew he was a pretty good player and I knew that he had noticed that me and the BB were both playing pretty tight approaching the bubble. Blinds are 600-1200, I think, and UTG raises to 4.5K. It's folded to me. I'm thinking this guy could very well be bullying, even from UTG because of the way we were playing.

I repop him to 13K with air (62o, to be exact). I left myself about 37K behind, so it doesn't really look like a bluff on my part. I've been tight. I make a big raise OOP against a big stack, near the bubble. He thinks and thinks and thinks for probably 5 minutes. At this point I'm thinking he's either got AK or 99 or TT or something and he's deciding if he feels like flipping with me for a big chunk of his stack. (He probably had 200K, but still a big chunk.) Eventually he re-pushes, and I don't even bother with any Hollywood before folding. So my brilliant bluff didn't work, but I think it was a pretty good bluff, and maybe he really had QQ or something. I was able to get away with a decent enough stack to keep playing.

So nothing happens, I steal some blinds, yada yada, and get to the FT with the smallest stack, about 22k with blinds at 2K-4K, I think. I doubled twice, including an A9>AT suckout.

Later I wake up with KK after an EP raise and a call. I push. EP folds and the other guy calls with JTs. I win that huge pot and now I'm the chip leader.

Win a couple more flips to knock out a couple more people. Finally, get to HU and I have a 2-1 chip lead. We go back and forth for 6 or 7 hands and then there's a break.

We discuss a deal, $2K for each of us and then we'll play for the remaining $700. It really wasn't much of a deal, because the payouts originally were $2900-1800 or something, so we just evened it out a little.

First hand after the deal, I get KJs on the button and raise. He calls. Flop comes JT8. He pushes. I call. He has T9. Turn is a Q, giving me a K high straight and him a Q high straight. River is an A, giving me broadway.

Yay! I win.

It was weird that I didn't get that excited. Maybe because it was so late or because I wanted to be a gracious winner, but it was sort of like "Cool, I won, gg."

OK, guess that was a fairly extensive report after all.

Bedtime.

[nsidestrate]

Nice report and well done. Did you still have a 2:1 chip lead when you made the deal?

[Tall Paul]

Grats Fletch!

The final hand proving once again that KJ is the nuts.

[artistic2]

Nice win, congrats. Toss us a link when you write about the BB phenom. Would like to read about him.

[jfletcher]

Nice report and well done. Did you still have a 2:1 chip lead when you made the deal?

Yes, but I had about 32 BBs and the other guy had about 16, so obviously one hand could have easily flipped it. I thought it was a fair deal. Like I said, the regular 1st place payout was about 2900, we only flattened it a little. It was my idea to leave something on the table to play for, because that's more fun.

[chrisjp]

Nice report and well done. Did you still have a 2:1 chip lead when you made the deal?

Yes, but I had about 32 BBs and the other guy had about 16, so obviously one hand could have easily flipped it. I thought it was a fair deal.

You know the lawyer in me would have waited for him to double up...then take the deal.

Great win fletch!

And yeah this kid, the baseball player at the JC, looks to be really something. It's a big deal in Vegas. Nice kid; hope fame doesn't spoil him too much.

Chris

[taz115]

Congtrats jfletch! Taking down a live mtt is a great feeling.

[Piscivorous]

Fantastic win. A few weird questions. What happened to the good player that you tried to bluff off with 62o? Did he run bad or was he worse than you first thought?

I ask because sometimes I put a read on someone and then decide later that read was poor.

Anyway, very nice! Get paid to work and play.

[jfletcher]

Thanks Pi.

Actually he was good. I played with him for about four hours. Nice guy too.

He said he lost a really big flip when he was briefly moved away from the table. Then he got caught once on a steal when a short BB woke up with a hand and he lost another chunk when be raised into my KKpreflop. He folded that one. Eventually he busted 4th losing a flip to me. I had 55 vs his A6.

This was a fairly deep strcture by Vegas small buyin standards, but still pretty quick. You need a lot of luck. He hit his rush when we were at four tables and I hit mine at the FT.

[toronexti]

Nice job.

[jfletcher]

Thinking a little more clearly now than when I wrote my initial report.

In that big bluff hand of mine, the blinds were probably 1K-2K. I had about 53K at the time. I still like the play there, because I put him in a very tough spot, evident by the length of time he took to decide. Upon further review, he either made a great read that I had nothing, or else he really had something pretty good, like QQ.

Also, on the final hand, my previous description is obviously wrong, if you were paying attention.

I had KJ. Villain had T8. Board was JT9. Turn Q. River A. That makes more sense. He said he probably wouldn't have called my preflop raise with T8 if we hadn't made the deal.

[jfletcher]

Here's the story on Bryce Harper, btw

http://mlb.fanhouse.com/2010/02/01/bryc ... llege-try/

[chrisjp]

Nice article Jeff.