Friday, November 6, 2009

12 Hours of Tournament Poker

Friday, November 6, 2009  

On November 5, 2009, I hopped in my car and drove to Commerce Casino. I arrived at around Noon and headed up the stairs to the ballroom and bought-in for the opening event of the L.A. Poker Open, a $500K guaranteed, 4-day event.

Having time on my hands I went back down to the Galleria and proceeded to grind it out on the $200. I caught a sneaky little hand and tripled up right away. One of the things I've learned is that at the $200, there is only two ways to really play and make any money: (1) hard and aggressive or (2) small-ball and sneaky. Unfortunately, I lost a big hand 4-way, and got slapped down to just $250 right as the tournament began seating. I had to take my little $50 profit and take my seat at table 19, seat 6.

A loud hyper-aggressive player named Edwin was seated to my immediate right. He has a reputation in L.A, and it is not a good one. Because he can be a calling station with basically any two cards, when he's in a pot - everybody calls almost any raise because they all know he will too. His position next to me costs me a couple of big pots, and the excuse from the other players were, "well, he's in the hand and he calls with anything." Great, just great. So I had to be a folding or all-in station until he busted out before the third level.

I then went card dead. I milked my original 3000 chip stack for most of the first half of the day, occasionally getting over 5000, but then falling back down to 3000. In fact, I stayed between 3000 and 5000 for 5 levels of play when I caught pocket kings and rivered a set against pocket queens for a double up to over 10,000.

Right after the double up, they broke table 19 and I was moved to table 22, seat 7. By that time the field of 1075 entrants had reduced to just 300 but only the top 99 poker players got a return on their investment. I went card dead, again, and only played big aces or pocket pairs over 10's. Super tight, super conservative - I figured, even if I didn't make the top 27, if I made money back - - I could play the sequential days for basically nothing. I'd rather try again and build a bigger stack, than go into day 2 a huge underdog.

I toggled between average and below average in chips for another 5 levels, getting chipped down then doubling back up. Many of the players who clearly didn't understand that based on the chip ratio at the table, huge bets wouldn't push people off their hands - rather it would provoke the "All-In" forcing the raiser to be pot committed based on their betting investment. Example, average stacks at my table were 10,000, the blinds were at 1600/800 + 200 ante, and people would raise off position with 4-bets. A short stack can't call with half their chips to be pushed off a flop! A short stack wants all 5 cards for all their chips. Needless to say, the chips migrated around the table and several short stacks doubled up when they woke up with a hand. The majority of the all-ins were not open shoves, they were reraises. I got knocked out when, with the whole table folded around, the small blind bet half his stack with K/Q and I pushed back with A/J. He hit his King, because as I'm sure you know by know - -I CAN'T BEAT KING / QUEEN.

Small ball worked for me so I stuck to it. I not only made the money, I made it to the second level and received $600 (the maximum payout for anyone who didn't qualify for Day 2). Out of 1075 poker players, I placed 56th - not a bad showing for catching mostly rags or big cards with no kickers, and very few pairs (never pocket aces or queens, kings only the one time, and jacks twice). They buy-in was $220 to play, and with the $50 win at the cash tables, I decided to buy-in for Day 1b and (just in case) Day 1c. The total cost to me out-of-pocket, for all three days is $10. Not bad, not bad.

Without the pressure of "loosing" anything, I will hopefully catch cards, chip up and be able to open up my game more. It is a tough field, and surely a donkfest - but a poker player's got to do, what a poker player's got to do.

Posted in: ,,,,,