Well, today was the day where this really resonated with me, that I can do this as more than a recreational basis. Today was simultaneously 2 personal bests of mine. It was my highest cash game session win, and it was one of the most grotesque win rates I've ever seen much less personally posted.
So, without further adieu, my trip to Brantford Casino.
Basically the story goes, Griffin backed out of a trip to Fallsview, so I was left with nothing to do today. After sitting around and playing break even poker online, I decided I was kind of bored, and decided to head down to Brantford Casino where they offer some quality limit poker games, since that's what I've made this run at right now.
So, I got there around 8:00, waited for over an hour to get onto a table and got on at around 9:00. I sat at a 10/20 limit table, with 500 dollars.
For the first little while it was fairly boring, the table was inredibly easy, and I was real comfortable sitting there. One thing you should know before we go any further, is I'm bit of a maniac at limit poker, so when you hear stories of some of these hands, keep in mind, it's actually a very specific stratagy I have for the game.
In any event, I finally got a playable hand and decided to come into a pot. Qc/Jc, and saw a flop of K/Q/6 rainbow, 1 club. I bet out from EP, and got a raise and a couple of callers, so I called behind. Turn was the Ac, so I slowed down for a check call here now. It went bet 20, raise to 40, call infront of me, so I naturally called, and initial better called. River was a 10. I bet out, and only got one caller(not sure if I liked my bet here, more I thought about it after I could probably milk another bet out of some people if I check). Anyway, nice pot.
After that hand, I promptly bled chips back..
First, with A/10 in the cut-off raising and getting only BB to call. Flop was 10/4/6, he bet out I raised, he re-raised and I 4 bet him still figuring I had the best, he called. Turn was a 5. He checked, I bet, he raised, I called. River was a 7. He bet out. I flat folded to save the extra bet and he turned over 6/3. Nice hand?
Next, with A/J also in the cut-off the next rotation, I raised, got 3 callers from button, SB and BB. The flop was Ac/9h/4h(I had no hearts). I bet out, got everyone to call. Turn was a Jh. Not the best card but still not that bad. Checked to me so I bet again, and got everyone calling. River was a 7h, and it promptly went bet, raise infront of me. Obviously I folded. After that hand I was down to my original 500(actually a little more, I think it was 570 or so), when Griff called me to see what I was doing. I told him I was at the casino, and told him how I was doing. Now, this is important for the really insane part of this story. This call was right around 10:30pm.
The hand immediately following that phone call, I was in the BB. The cut-off raised, button called, SB called, and I called with Qc/9c. Pot sat at 80. Flop was gin, Jc/8c/6c. SB led out at the pot and bet 10, and I was going to raise, I wanted value right off the hop, but I saw the cut-off already reaching for his chips, and he tossed the 20 in before I could stop him. So, I decided to just call the 10 that I was initially faced with, to commit him to that raise to 20, so I could 3 bet it. The button called the 20, and the SB went to 30. I slammed over to 40, capping it. cut-off called, and button called. Pot was now $240. As if the flop wasn't gin, the turn was the absolute end all, be all, of gin cards. 10c. Perfect. Now there's 4 clubs on board, and I'm absolutely positive that the ace and king are out there. SB leads again for 20, and I smoothe call that 20, hoping cut-off will do me a favour again. And again he complies by raising to 40. Button calls the 40. SB goes to 60, and I cap it at 80(exact same betting pattern as the flop), everyone calls behind. Pot is now $560. River is a blank, a 3h I beleive, which really kind of upset me actually, I was hoping the board would pair because I had to beleive the other kid still in this hand(button), had a set and was chasing a boat. SB led out again for 20. I didn't screw around this time and I raised to 40. Cut-0ff called the 40, and the button finally folded. SB came back at it again to 60, and I re-raised again to 80. Cut-off still called, and SB called. Pot of $800. Cut-off showed KK with the Kc, SB showed AK, with the Ac, and I showed my straight flush. Ship it.
That put me close to 1200 for the session now. And that pretty much was the opening of the flood gates.
After a few more smaller pots, I had built it up to 1400 infront of me, and then my next big hand happened(remember what I said about hands that may not make sense, this is one of them...).
UTG I am dealt 10h/8h. This is the type of hand in limit I like to see flops with. Unfortunately I don't like my position, so I merely put on a semi-bluff and try and represent something more. I raise from UTG to 20. It's called twice before it's re-raised to 30, and 2 more calls behind that. Being that the pot is so big now, I decide to cap it and hope to flop large, knowing bad flops are easy to leave here, so I cap, and everyone in the pot calls. 6 players capped. Pot is 240. Flop is weak for me, even though I do make top pair. 10/6/4. I lead out 10, and it goes fold, fold, to the re-raiser, who raises to 20. Call, fold to me, so I call the extra 10. Pot is now 300. Turn isn't terrible. 5. Still a rainbow board, but now I do happen to find myself a straight draw. I check. Raiser bets 20, and it's called, so I call behind. River is gin, the 7. I lead out the 20, it gets called, and called. The raiser shows his overpair, QQ, the other player randomly shows 3/3, also for a straight now, and I show the high straight for the 360 dollar pot.
Now I'm sitting at nearly 1600, feeling good, playing pretty well, extracting chips efficiently, and I'm running really well right now too, so I'm in game mode.
I win another pot off the player who called that hand with 3/3 on every street. The first one I have 10/10, raise, get called by a few players. Flop is 8/6/4. I bet out, he calls along. Turn is a 6. I bet, he raises now, and I call. River is a 10. He bets out out of turn, so I check, and then raise his bet, he folds 3/3 face up this time after misplaying it brutally again.
A few hands later he calls a fairly well done bluff by me, I thought...on a K/K/6/A/2 board, with 4/2. A little startling, and a small dent, but that's alright.
The next hand I'm UTG with KK. Being the goofy player I am, I decide to just call here, because they're almost worthless until I've seen the flop. 4 players behind me all come along with raises until it's capped back to me with 5 players in the hand. I call. Pot is at 200. Flop is K/6/2. BB leads out, I raise, everyone folds to the BB who re-raises, I 4 bet, and he calls. Pot is now 280. Turn is a 9. He bets out, I raise, he 3 bets, I 4 bet(we're now uncapped), he raises again, and I 6 bet him, he calls. Pot is now $520. River is a Q. He bets out, I raise again, and smartly he finally realizes he's beat, but still calls, and shows 99. I show my KK for the 600 dollar pot, pushing me past $2000 infront of me now.
The table starts to fold away which is crushing to me since I was really loving the table, but I get one last pot in.
I call into a 6 way pot with 6h/8h. Pot is 60. Flop is literally startling to me. 5h/7h/9h. 2nd straight flush in a few hours, and it's right off the flop this time. The pot is capped before it even gets to me, so I call along. 5 players to the turn, pot is now $260. Turn is a Qc. Bet, raise, call, fold infront of me, I 3 bet, call, call, fold. 3 of us to the river. Pot is now $480. River is a 3s. Really upset there wasn't another heart since someone had to hold the Ah in this pot, and my straight flush is fairly well masked. It goes bet, call to me, I raise, and get called by both. One who flopped a baby flush(2/4 of hearts), the other one with 99 for top set. $600 dollar pot.
The last players from the table leave, and I look at the clock. 1:00am.
I look back at the castle of chips infront of me, and grab racks and start racking it up. 5 racks later, I'm just shy of the full 2500, $2480 was the final tally.
Just to really put this into perspective now, that's 1910 dollars, in 2 and a half hours of 10/20 limit. 95 big bets. 38 big bets / hour(these numbers are all during the streak I went on, the final tally is less gaudy but still fairly rediculous, 4 hours, 24 big bets / hour.
After my table had basically disintegrated, some new players came to sit down. I spent about a half hour or so at the table, but didn't like it, they all were younger, tighter, fairly solid players, so I just got up and walked out.
After that, I called Griff and told him how I had done, and I think he thought I was kidding at first since we had just talked about 3 hours before hand and I was even, but twas no joke good sir. Was just a real good run. Felt wonderful.
And to end the story on a creepy, weird note, another of my human interest stories. This one comes from me going to buy gas for the car-ride home. I stopped in at the gas station, and went to go pay for my gas, and noticed the new Maxim Magazine was out, so I picked it up. Erica Durance is on the cover, and she's a wonderful specimen of the human species. Anyway, I take the magazine up to the counter to pay for it and the gas, and this weird guy behind the counter, whose really overly polite, looks down at the magazine and goes, "Nice...". Nothing out of the ordinary, I concur with his sentiment that she is an attractive person. He then gets really, really creepy. In the picture she's wearing just underwear. He goes, "I wish I could get her out of that bra"...which is a little over the line, but okay. He then, and I couldn't make this up if I tried, proceeds to rub the picture of her, right where her breasts are. I pay for the magazine, and promptly tell him I'll just switch it out for a different one since that one is "damaged". He doesn't understand but allows it, and I leave the story much more creeped out than I once was.
Anywhoo, since I've typed for way too long anyway, let me pass along one final note to people. If you enjoy music, and the various melodies and harmonies that can be created my musicians, please, I'm begging you, go buy Hurt "Vol.2". Hurt is one of the best bands in music right now, and this CD is absolutely terrific.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Update(poker and life)...
So, this should be different, merely because I'm going to use this as a way to vent about alot of stuff, and this may come off however it comes off, I frankly don't care what people think of this issue of the blog, but since it is wrapped around poker let's at least start there.
I have this friend, we'll call him Shmiffin Shmenger as an alias. He has been a friend of mine for a long time now, ever since we travelled across North America playing a computer game together. Eventually there came a day where he decided to move in with me, and we got a place in Oakville together(the place, just for the record, was an absolute hole in the earth).
Anywhoo, he, around playing the computer game we played back in the day at the very highest level possible, decided he wanted to play poker too, and he was playing like 5 tables, and burning through a little money playing low stakes and learning. This to me, was weird, I spent my time reading and studying the game before I ever bought in for money. He jumped right into the fire, with some success but overall was basically a break-even player.
Something happened though, he figured this game out. I would say, right now today, I don't know a better NL Hold'Em tournament player than Griffin...I mean, Schmiffin. Granted I know of some other monsters in the MTT scene thanks to jackseven, like fishbones namely(congrats on the 65k btw, methinks it's time you ponied up for a WPT event). However, I've never seen a run like Schmiffin is on right now. In the last month or so, he's finished 3rd of 448 players for $3500, 3rd of 338 for $1900, 4th of 1095 for $1750, 2nd of 1130 for $3300, 1st of 276 for $7200 and 3rd of 1048 for $4300. That's over $20,000 in the last month or so.
Dating back a few months now, we were the opposite, I played the MTT scene, and he was a cash game junkie. Suddenly, about a month and a half ago(shortly after my trip to Las Vegas), we had a discussion where we both realized we were playing the wrong game. He started the MTT, because he's a monster at finding the right times to gamble, and always builds big chip stacks and contends.
Me, I'm a more reserved player, and thus I started out on a cash game run. Since I got back from Las Vegas, I bought in to Pokerstars for 400. I've turned that in to around 7000, and that's after taking some money out of the site for the first time. I've climbed from playing 2/4 limit and 1/2 limit, to playing regularily at 10/20 limit now online. Infact, and I know this because since I decided to do this I keep emmaculate records of my cash game play to ensure I'm ahead of the curve at the game I'm playing. In 23 days now, I have not once had a losing day. Granted that doesn't seem drastic, but 3 weeks of playing 5 hours every day(minimum), and never booking a loss, has seen my account steadily soaring. Can I keep this up? I'm sure not, but at the same time I don't feel like I'm doing anything drastically special or even running that well. I always considered myself a much better limit than NL player, and I rarely lose at limit poker anyway, this is just kind of a real hot-streak ontop of my already, what I consider very solid play.
It's become weird talking poker with Griffin...oops, Schmiffin, nowadays. When we talk, I don't want to get too nutty about it because we're both very much realists about these runs and that they can't last forever, but at the same time neither of us thinks we're doing anything extraordinary right now, and there's a level of excitement you can see in the way we discuss poker now, as if maybe this game is beatable, and this is a realistic profession to have. Obviously we knew it was, but had struggled with the idea that we could realistically do it for money steadily, and now there's a light at the end of that tunnel.
He might correct all this with a hate laced tirade about me putting words in his mouth, but this is the way I feel now. I feel like there's light at the end of the tunnel. It's refreshing, and it's been alot of fun earning between 189(worst day of the last 23), and 941(best day of the last 23) dollars a day for the last 23 days straight. Does that continue? No. Can I play this game consistently at a high level and expect to make money steadily playing limit, a game I consider myself very, very good at? Absolutely.
This all comes on the heels of me quitting my job at a computer sales store in the area. I didn't do it for poker, however, I did do it because of poker, if that makes any sense. I have alot of expendable money in various poker bankrolls, and ontop of that, I earn fairly consistently in online cash games. I didn't particularily need a job, but I liked the financial security of a guaranteed paycheck. However, I was not ready to work somewhere I hated working for that guaranteed paycheck. I quit after several bad days and several run ins with management and other personnel. If I can make a suggestion, never work in a field that has commisioned sales, maybe it's just my 2 experiences with it now, but it creates a really competitive and tense work environment.
And just for fun, despite this being related to poker precisely no way at all, I attended a few screenings at the Toronto International Film Festival this past week, the Midnight Madness showings.
The first one I attended was The Devil's Chair, this creepy English horror film, that was fairly tense, very gory, and slightly creative. It got a bit bogged down in the middle, albeit intentionally, and it got really repetative in the early going repeating the same jokes over and over, but the payoff was worth it. Pretty satisfying horror movie, although everyone including a few friends, kept telling us(myself and Griffin...that's right, I said it, fuck Schmiffin), to wait until Saturday's movie.
The next night we went to a martial arts movie starring Donnie Yen, one of the gods of Martial Arts films right now, who North American movie fans will recognize from Highlander: Endgame, Blade II and Shanghai Knights. He's starred in some badass movies overseas too, specifically SPL(Sha Po Lang). The other star of the film, Collin Chu, who was in The Matrix Revolutions and The Matrix Reloaded, as Seraph. The movie, entitled Dao Huo Xian(FlashPoint), was an inredibly done martial arts film that used alot of MMA fighting styles, submission holds and made the fight sequences all look incredibly realistic and cool. No wirework. No shenanigans. Just incredibly realistic looking straight fight scenes. The last one, between Collin and Donnie, was mind blowing and drew a standing ovation from the audience.
And the third one, the last of the festival, entitle À l'intérieur(The Inside), I don't even know what to say. The Weinstein Group bought it at the festival, and intends on releasing it. Where, I'm not sure. Because there isn't a hope it's on a North American theater screen. This movie was brutally, unrelentingly intense and terrifying, immensely gory, disturbing and haunting. This was one freakishly intense horror movie, that stemmed from a very basic story. It shows that these French directors coming out of France with horror movies really know what they're doing(Alexandre Aja also had a big debut in the same vain, called High Tension, that was also a simple story and just so rediculously well paced, tense and gory that you can't help but love it). This made High Tension even look tame.
Why do I babble on about all this? This was my first time at a film festival, and the experience is incredibly cool. The movies are light years better than some of the drivel Hollywood churns out(especially right now, Mr.Woodcock? Are you serious?). I strongly suggest going out to a festival, meet the directors, stars, talk to them, and support them and their efforts in making creative, original films. All three of these movies, if nothing else, had a style or way about them that was unique to movies I've seen, and I'm a huge fan of them.
To anyone playing online poker and not making any headway, keep your chin up. The game is beatable, it takes time. You may not be ready yet, but there'll be a point where you find a comfort zone, and you start finding the game borderline easy, and feel invincible(quoting Schmiffin), and this game becomes beautiful.
I have this friend, we'll call him Shmiffin Shmenger as an alias. He has been a friend of mine for a long time now, ever since we travelled across North America playing a computer game together. Eventually there came a day where he decided to move in with me, and we got a place in Oakville together(the place, just for the record, was an absolute hole in the earth).
Anywhoo, he, around playing the computer game we played back in the day at the very highest level possible, decided he wanted to play poker too, and he was playing like 5 tables, and burning through a little money playing low stakes and learning. This to me, was weird, I spent my time reading and studying the game before I ever bought in for money. He jumped right into the fire, with some success but overall was basically a break-even player.
Something happened though, he figured this game out. I would say, right now today, I don't know a better NL Hold'Em tournament player than Griffin...I mean, Schmiffin. Granted I know of some other monsters in the MTT scene thanks to jackseven, like fishbones namely(congrats on the 65k btw, methinks it's time you ponied up for a WPT event). However, I've never seen a run like Schmiffin is on right now. In the last month or so, he's finished 3rd of 448 players for $3500, 3rd of 338 for $1900, 4th of 1095 for $1750, 2nd of 1130 for $3300, 1st of 276 for $7200 and 3rd of 1048 for $4300. That's over $20,000 in the last month or so.
Dating back a few months now, we were the opposite, I played the MTT scene, and he was a cash game junkie. Suddenly, about a month and a half ago(shortly after my trip to Las Vegas), we had a discussion where we both realized we were playing the wrong game. He started the MTT, because he's a monster at finding the right times to gamble, and always builds big chip stacks and contends.
Me, I'm a more reserved player, and thus I started out on a cash game run. Since I got back from Las Vegas, I bought in to Pokerstars for 400. I've turned that in to around 7000, and that's after taking some money out of the site for the first time. I've climbed from playing 2/4 limit and 1/2 limit, to playing regularily at 10/20 limit now online. Infact, and I know this because since I decided to do this I keep emmaculate records of my cash game play to ensure I'm ahead of the curve at the game I'm playing. In 23 days now, I have not once had a losing day. Granted that doesn't seem drastic, but 3 weeks of playing 5 hours every day(minimum), and never booking a loss, has seen my account steadily soaring. Can I keep this up? I'm sure not, but at the same time I don't feel like I'm doing anything drastically special or even running that well. I always considered myself a much better limit than NL player, and I rarely lose at limit poker anyway, this is just kind of a real hot-streak ontop of my already, what I consider very solid play.
It's become weird talking poker with Griffin...oops, Schmiffin, nowadays. When we talk, I don't want to get too nutty about it because we're both very much realists about these runs and that they can't last forever, but at the same time neither of us thinks we're doing anything extraordinary right now, and there's a level of excitement you can see in the way we discuss poker now, as if maybe this game is beatable, and this is a realistic profession to have. Obviously we knew it was, but had struggled with the idea that we could realistically do it for money steadily, and now there's a light at the end of that tunnel.
He might correct all this with a hate laced tirade about me putting words in his mouth, but this is the way I feel now. I feel like there's light at the end of the tunnel. It's refreshing, and it's been alot of fun earning between 189(worst day of the last 23), and 941(best day of the last 23) dollars a day for the last 23 days straight. Does that continue? No. Can I play this game consistently at a high level and expect to make money steadily playing limit, a game I consider myself very, very good at? Absolutely.
This all comes on the heels of me quitting my job at a computer sales store in the area. I didn't do it for poker, however, I did do it because of poker, if that makes any sense. I have alot of expendable money in various poker bankrolls, and ontop of that, I earn fairly consistently in online cash games. I didn't particularily need a job, but I liked the financial security of a guaranteed paycheck. However, I was not ready to work somewhere I hated working for that guaranteed paycheck. I quit after several bad days and several run ins with management and other personnel. If I can make a suggestion, never work in a field that has commisioned sales, maybe it's just my 2 experiences with it now, but it creates a really competitive and tense work environment.
And just for fun, despite this being related to poker precisely no way at all, I attended a few screenings at the Toronto International Film Festival this past week, the Midnight Madness showings.
The first one I attended was The Devil's Chair, this creepy English horror film, that was fairly tense, very gory, and slightly creative. It got a bit bogged down in the middle, albeit intentionally, and it got really repetative in the early going repeating the same jokes over and over, but the payoff was worth it. Pretty satisfying horror movie, although everyone including a few friends, kept telling us(myself and Griffin...that's right, I said it, fuck Schmiffin), to wait until Saturday's movie.
The next night we went to a martial arts movie starring Donnie Yen, one of the gods of Martial Arts films right now, who North American movie fans will recognize from Highlander: Endgame, Blade II and Shanghai Knights. He's starred in some badass movies overseas too, specifically SPL(Sha Po Lang). The other star of the film, Collin Chu, who was in The Matrix Revolutions and The Matrix Reloaded, as Seraph. The movie, entitled Dao Huo Xian(FlashPoint), was an inredibly done martial arts film that used alot of MMA fighting styles, submission holds and made the fight sequences all look incredibly realistic and cool. No wirework. No shenanigans. Just incredibly realistic looking straight fight scenes. The last one, between Collin and Donnie, was mind blowing and drew a standing ovation from the audience.
And the third one, the last of the festival, entitle À l'intérieur(The Inside), I don't even know what to say. The Weinstein Group bought it at the festival, and intends on releasing it. Where, I'm not sure. Because there isn't a hope it's on a North American theater screen. This movie was brutally, unrelentingly intense and terrifying, immensely gory, disturbing and haunting. This was one freakishly intense horror movie, that stemmed from a very basic story. It shows that these French directors coming out of France with horror movies really know what they're doing(Alexandre Aja also had a big debut in the same vain, called High Tension, that was also a simple story and just so rediculously well paced, tense and gory that you can't help but love it). This made High Tension even look tame.
Why do I babble on about all this? This was my first time at a film festival, and the experience is incredibly cool. The movies are light years better than some of the drivel Hollywood churns out(especially right now, Mr.Woodcock? Are you serious?). I strongly suggest going out to a festival, meet the directors, stars, talk to them, and support them and their efforts in making creative, original films. All three of these movies, if nothing else, had a style or way about them that was unique to movies I've seen, and I'm a huge fan of them.
To anyone playing online poker and not making any headway, keep your chin up. The game is beatable, it takes time. You may not be ready yet, but there'll be a point where you find a comfort zone, and you start finding the game borderline easy, and feel invincible(quoting Schmiffin), and this game becomes beautiful.
Sunday, September 9, 2007
Heads Up Challenge...
So, if you're unfamiliar with the terms, scroll down and read the preview thing. If you're reading this on Jackseven, basically me and a friend of mine had a prop bet where we'd play a best 2 out of 3 heads up series, if I won, he, a die hard Leafs fan, would have to wear my Habs jersey to a sports bar on October 6th(Habs vs Leafs round 1 this season) and cheer openly for the Habs and declare the Leafs suck everytime the Habs scored. Likewise the other way, if he won I'd wear a Leafs jersey and so on...
One thing I want to make clear to anyone from the tour that's reading this. We trash talk each other, alot. But the truth is, I have as much respect for Alex as I have for any player I've sat at a live table with, and I think he has at least some respect back for me. He's a very solid player who thinks the game very well, and if nothing else putting this prop bet on the table was a way for us to take these games as serious as anything.
So...onto the show.
GAME 1 :
Game one started off a little slow, basically a simple feeling out phaze. The structure was 10,000 in chips, the blinds were 50/100 to start, and raised every 15 minutes. Alex started off a little agressively, I think largely because he knows I play an agressive heads up game typically, and would want to take command early, so he took the play away alot. So I became a little more patient. I widdled down early until the first fairly big hand we played came up, about 30 minutes into the match.
I was the SB, and looked down at AA. The first thought that ran through my head was, if I smoothe call here, he'll be able to peice this together later on streets, because we're both big fans of slow playing big pairs heads up. So I decided to raise. Blinds were 100/200, I raised to 600, a fairly standard play from my button, I do it alot. The play was basically an odd trap. Smoothe calling looks more like aces here to him than this does, and I'm very likely to be re-raised in this spot if he has any real hand since my range is still ATC at this point. Sure enough he announced re-raise, and went to 1800 total. This was the point where I thought to myself calling is a viable option, because I had already gotten what I wanted, and would play the hand out with position. The problem was we were still deep enough he could leave a top pair or something if he really had a bad feeling about post-flop action, and I wanted the kill right here. So I decided to re-raise once more, not overly big, but a way to get him fully committed to the pot. So I re-raised another 2000 ontop. This was my way of basically hoping he'd call and then be so deep into the pot at this point that he couldn't leave. Unfortunately after tanking for quite a while he folded.
That worked my way back from being widdled down to fairly even, when the killshot of round 1 occured :
He was SB, with blinds now at 200/400, and raised to 1300. I looked at 6s/7s, which is a marginal hand heads up despite it's suited connector-ness(ya, I just wrote that phrase, suck it English language!) but I decided I could float a bit in this spot and see what happened. So I called. Flop was Qd/4c/5s. So I flopped a draw. I gave alot of thought to betting out on the draw, but I just checked instead. He continued at the pot for 1800, and I called. The turn was a 6h. I checked again now, completely unsure of how I'd react to another bet(in my mind, pushing now became a somewhat viable option). Instead, he checked behind. The river was a 2d, making the board Qd/6h/5s/4c/2d. Bad card. I felt like his check on the turn was a declaration he didn't have a Queen, which made stone bluff an option which might now have hit the board. He also still had a range of like, 99 or somewhere around there. I checked one more time, hoping to show the hand down, and he shoved in. I immediately stood up, kind of frustrated with myself because I really should have utilized a block bet here to avoid being faced with this tough a decision. Instead, here I am. So I started verbalizing out loud what I thought about the hand. I didn't buy a Queen because of the check on the turn, and because now on the river there's no reason for him to shove it with a Queen because there's not really a range of hands that would call that he has beat. There was an outside chance he had 2 pair(Q/4 or Q/2), or had made the straight with his kicker(Q/3). I didn't buy the straight because it was an overbet, I figured he might have bet value for the straight. Q4 scared the hell out of me. The more likely scenario in my mind, was that he had run a bluff, gotten caught on the flop(even though I only had 7 high on the flop), backed off and then seen a real good card to bluff at materialize for him. After a while in the tank, speaking all this verbally and watching Alex for any indication to any of this, which naturally there wasn't, I figured his range was much wider a bluff here than a hand. In my mind I viewed this as a 60% bluff, 40% not, and took the gamble and called with the 6's. He tapped the table, said nice call, and mucked, leaving himself 400, and me 19,600.
We played a blind hand for his last 400, he doubled up, then did it again and I won.
Score : Habs 1, Leafs 0
GAME 2 :
After a breif break, we sat back down to game #2. This is where a form of psychology came into play, in my mind I know Alex always talks about going down fighting rather than letting himself get chipped away, and I figured applying that to this meant he would be coming out really agressive.
So, my plan here was to get almost equally if not more agressive, and try and basically out crazy him here, because I knew he'd desperately want to get chips here.
Unfortunately one big problem developed. Every time I would check raise bluff him, he'd 3 bet me with a made hand. It actually became a running joke because he saw KK three times during this heads up match(which was by far the shortest of the 3).
He very quickly worked me down with a few odd set up hands, where I'd flop mid pair, figure I'm good and call him, and find myself faced with a bad turn card that he had hit. I got rivered a couple times calling a bluff with King high and seeing him roll over a card, and most of all, he relentlessly hammered away at my chip stack, very quickly finding me down to 4000 to his 16,000.
The finishing hand was rather sick. He smoothe called from the SB with blinds at 200/400. I checked with Q/2 offsuit. The flop was A/Q/3. I checked and he fired at the pot, 600. I just re-shoved, figuring he wouldn't have an ace here because he rarely limps them(although we both had done it a few times to make spots like this a little more tricky where we'd not be able to rule out a limped A/9 or A/10). He immediately said "God I played this hand badly", which struck me as a little weird, and then called. He showed KK. Oh well, bad spot for me. No card came to help me.
Score : Leafs 1, Habs 1
ROUND 3 - TIE BREAK :
So, if psychology played a role in this, we both knew that this would be tight, as both of us absolutely did not want to lose this game. So naturally the logical step to take here, was to get agressive as hell here, like he did in game 2, and take plays out of the way, and make him get real sick to try and find spots to put chips in the pot. I wanted the lead from the word go. And basically that's the way it went. Right from the word go I took a lead, and very slowly built it up from there, from the 10k a peice I basically worked him right to a 16,000 to 4,000 disadvantage, and then came our first really big pot :
Blinds 200/400(this was where it seemed things started to get a little more agressive during all the matches), I raised to 1200 with 7s/4s. He called. The flop was Kc/5d/6c. He checked and I checked behind. The turn was a 7h. He shoved in, about 3200 for me to call. Now again I'm faced with a weird decision, I couldn't decide if that was 2 pair playing scared now that a straight was developing or what. Infact, if Alex did make one mistake during this entire game, it was talking, ALOT, during my decision making. Infact, as soon as he shoved, he stood up and started repeating "come on, no habs jersey, no habs jersey", which right away I pointed out "that scares me". After that he talked ALOT, and alot of it was fairly convincing for me to call, but as I peiced it together I felt like he had stumbled right off the bat with his speach, and when I called him on it, he switched to saying the things he knows I'd be looking for him to say to call, to try and sway me back. After a while, I folded. He didn't show, but after the game admitted he had 5/6 for a flopped 2 pair, which still if I'd of called would have left me very life drawing to a K/8/7/4/3 for a win.
Instead, I actually started to really regret the decision to fold there, because he quickly worked himself back with ruthless agression, again showing that he wouldn't let himself get blinded away.
After a while, blinds got as high as they got for us, 400/800, which considering our 20,000 on the table total, were real substantial blinds. Finally, with me still leading about 12,000 to 8,000, we played another big pot.
Button/SB, I looked down at AQ offsuit, and obviously raised, to 2400. He went into the tank for about 3.2 milliseconds after looking at his cards, and shoved in and again stood up. I stood up too to pace for a moment before announcing call. During the breif moment he said something that really put me at ease, calling me as pocket 7's, which I always beleive in a heads up spot like that, means you have high cards, and there's one one high card hand that has me beat. To prove my theory, he tabled A/J. Sonny naturally made quite a long drawn out show of the board to my agony and much pleading for him to just do it quickly. The flop was golden, 10/6/4, all clubs, I had the Q of clubs for the only flush draw, eliminating him down to 3 outs. Turn, Qh, switches his outs now to a king. River, and I'll never forget that card as long as I live because it was the greatest card I've ever seen at a poker table, 7h. Brick. Ship it please.
Score : Habs 2, Leafs 1
After that, we got a few pictures of Alex in the Habs jersey(coming to a facebook near you), and then he wore the jersey during the event tonight. During the event I played fairly well again, and managed to become the first member of EPT staff to Final Table, capping off a pretty good day of poker for me, finishing 3rd.
If you missed the Alex in a Habs jersey show, the real show is October 6th at Bobby D's. It's a Saturday night, where the Leafs and Habs will be playing on TV. During that event he'll be wearing the Habs jersey again, cheering for the Habs, and yelling that the Leafs suck every time the Habs score. Bring video cameras if you'd like.
On a serious note, GG to Alex. That thing was far from easy, and if I don't make the call in game 1, you probably sweep it.
Also, thanks to everyone that showed up, especially Hal and Sonny for shuffling/dealing, we appreciate people taking an interest in the game, and we appreciate you giving up a Saturday afternoon to watch us play, that's incredibly flattering.
Alex, see you on the 6th kid.
One thing I want to make clear to anyone from the tour that's reading this. We trash talk each other, alot. But the truth is, I have as much respect for Alex as I have for any player I've sat at a live table with, and I think he has at least some respect back for me. He's a very solid player who thinks the game very well, and if nothing else putting this prop bet on the table was a way for us to take these games as serious as anything.
So...onto the show.
GAME 1 :
Game one started off a little slow, basically a simple feeling out phaze. The structure was 10,000 in chips, the blinds were 50/100 to start, and raised every 15 minutes. Alex started off a little agressively, I think largely because he knows I play an agressive heads up game typically, and would want to take command early, so he took the play away alot. So I became a little more patient. I widdled down early until the first fairly big hand we played came up, about 30 minutes into the match.
I was the SB, and looked down at AA. The first thought that ran through my head was, if I smoothe call here, he'll be able to peice this together later on streets, because we're both big fans of slow playing big pairs heads up. So I decided to raise. Blinds were 100/200, I raised to 600, a fairly standard play from my button, I do it alot. The play was basically an odd trap. Smoothe calling looks more like aces here to him than this does, and I'm very likely to be re-raised in this spot if he has any real hand since my range is still ATC at this point. Sure enough he announced re-raise, and went to 1800 total. This was the point where I thought to myself calling is a viable option, because I had already gotten what I wanted, and would play the hand out with position. The problem was we were still deep enough he could leave a top pair or something if he really had a bad feeling about post-flop action, and I wanted the kill right here. So I decided to re-raise once more, not overly big, but a way to get him fully committed to the pot. So I re-raised another 2000 ontop. This was my way of basically hoping he'd call and then be so deep into the pot at this point that he couldn't leave. Unfortunately after tanking for quite a while he folded.
That worked my way back from being widdled down to fairly even, when the killshot of round 1 occured :
He was SB, with blinds now at 200/400, and raised to 1300. I looked at 6s/7s, which is a marginal hand heads up despite it's suited connector-ness(ya, I just wrote that phrase, suck it English language!) but I decided I could float a bit in this spot and see what happened. So I called. Flop was Qd/4c/5s. So I flopped a draw. I gave alot of thought to betting out on the draw, but I just checked instead. He continued at the pot for 1800, and I called. The turn was a 6h. I checked again now, completely unsure of how I'd react to another bet(in my mind, pushing now became a somewhat viable option). Instead, he checked behind. The river was a 2d, making the board Qd/6h/5s/4c/2d. Bad card. I felt like his check on the turn was a declaration he didn't have a Queen, which made stone bluff an option which might now have hit the board. He also still had a range of like, 99 or somewhere around there. I checked one more time, hoping to show the hand down, and he shoved in. I immediately stood up, kind of frustrated with myself because I really should have utilized a block bet here to avoid being faced with this tough a decision. Instead, here I am. So I started verbalizing out loud what I thought about the hand. I didn't buy a Queen because of the check on the turn, and because now on the river there's no reason for him to shove it with a Queen because there's not really a range of hands that would call that he has beat. There was an outside chance he had 2 pair(Q/4 or Q/2), or had made the straight with his kicker(Q/3). I didn't buy the straight because it was an overbet, I figured he might have bet value for the straight. Q4 scared the hell out of me. The more likely scenario in my mind, was that he had run a bluff, gotten caught on the flop(even though I only had 7 high on the flop), backed off and then seen a real good card to bluff at materialize for him. After a while in the tank, speaking all this verbally and watching Alex for any indication to any of this, which naturally there wasn't, I figured his range was much wider a bluff here than a hand. In my mind I viewed this as a 60% bluff, 40% not, and took the gamble and called with the 6's. He tapped the table, said nice call, and mucked, leaving himself 400, and me 19,600.
We played a blind hand for his last 400, he doubled up, then did it again and I won.
Score : Habs 1, Leafs 0
GAME 2 :
After a breif break, we sat back down to game #2. This is where a form of psychology came into play, in my mind I know Alex always talks about going down fighting rather than letting himself get chipped away, and I figured applying that to this meant he would be coming out really agressive.
So, my plan here was to get almost equally if not more agressive, and try and basically out crazy him here, because I knew he'd desperately want to get chips here.
Unfortunately one big problem developed. Every time I would check raise bluff him, he'd 3 bet me with a made hand. It actually became a running joke because he saw KK three times during this heads up match(which was by far the shortest of the 3).
He very quickly worked me down with a few odd set up hands, where I'd flop mid pair, figure I'm good and call him, and find myself faced with a bad turn card that he had hit. I got rivered a couple times calling a bluff with King high and seeing him roll over a card, and most of all, he relentlessly hammered away at my chip stack, very quickly finding me down to 4000 to his 16,000.
The finishing hand was rather sick. He smoothe called from the SB with blinds at 200/400. I checked with Q/2 offsuit. The flop was A/Q/3. I checked and he fired at the pot, 600. I just re-shoved, figuring he wouldn't have an ace here because he rarely limps them(although we both had done it a few times to make spots like this a little more tricky where we'd not be able to rule out a limped A/9 or A/10). He immediately said "God I played this hand badly", which struck me as a little weird, and then called. He showed KK. Oh well, bad spot for me. No card came to help me.
Score : Leafs 1, Habs 1
ROUND 3 - TIE BREAK :
So, if psychology played a role in this, we both knew that this would be tight, as both of us absolutely did not want to lose this game. So naturally the logical step to take here, was to get agressive as hell here, like he did in game 2, and take plays out of the way, and make him get real sick to try and find spots to put chips in the pot. I wanted the lead from the word go. And basically that's the way it went. Right from the word go I took a lead, and very slowly built it up from there, from the 10k a peice I basically worked him right to a 16,000 to 4,000 disadvantage, and then came our first really big pot :
Blinds 200/400(this was where it seemed things started to get a little more agressive during all the matches), I raised to 1200 with 7s/4s. He called. The flop was Kc/5d/6c. He checked and I checked behind. The turn was a 7h. He shoved in, about 3200 for me to call. Now again I'm faced with a weird decision, I couldn't decide if that was 2 pair playing scared now that a straight was developing or what. Infact, if Alex did make one mistake during this entire game, it was talking, ALOT, during my decision making. Infact, as soon as he shoved, he stood up and started repeating "come on, no habs jersey, no habs jersey", which right away I pointed out "that scares me". After that he talked ALOT, and alot of it was fairly convincing for me to call, but as I peiced it together I felt like he had stumbled right off the bat with his speach, and when I called him on it, he switched to saying the things he knows I'd be looking for him to say to call, to try and sway me back. After a while, I folded. He didn't show, but after the game admitted he had 5/6 for a flopped 2 pair, which still if I'd of called would have left me very life drawing to a K/8/7/4/3 for a win.
Instead, I actually started to really regret the decision to fold there, because he quickly worked himself back with ruthless agression, again showing that he wouldn't let himself get blinded away.
After a while, blinds got as high as they got for us, 400/800, which considering our 20,000 on the table total, were real substantial blinds. Finally, with me still leading about 12,000 to 8,000, we played another big pot.
Button/SB, I looked down at AQ offsuit, and obviously raised, to 2400. He went into the tank for about 3.2 milliseconds after looking at his cards, and shoved in and again stood up. I stood up too to pace for a moment before announcing call. During the breif moment he said something that really put me at ease, calling me as pocket 7's, which I always beleive in a heads up spot like that, means you have high cards, and there's one one high card hand that has me beat. To prove my theory, he tabled A/J. Sonny naturally made quite a long drawn out show of the board to my agony and much pleading for him to just do it quickly. The flop was golden, 10/6/4, all clubs, I had the Q of clubs for the only flush draw, eliminating him down to 3 outs. Turn, Qh, switches his outs now to a king. River, and I'll never forget that card as long as I live because it was the greatest card I've ever seen at a poker table, 7h. Brick. Ship it please.
Score : Habs 2, Leafs 1
After that, we got a few pictures of Alex in the Habs jersey(coming to a facebook near you), and then he wore the jersey during the event tonight. During the event I played fairly well again, and managed to become the first member of EPT staff to Final Table, capping off a pretty good day of poker for me, finishing 3rd.
If you missed the Alex in a Habs jersey show, the real show is October 6th at Bobby D's. It's a Saturday night, where the Leafs and Habs will be playing on TV. During that event he'll be wearing the Habs jersey again, cheering for the Habs, and yelling that the Leafs suck every time the Habs score. Bring video cameras if you'd like.
On a serious note, GG to Alex. That thing was far from easy, and if I don't make the call in game 1, you probably sweep it.
Also, thanks to everyone that showed up, especially Hal and Sonny for shuffling/dealing, we appreciate people taking an interest in the game, and we appreciate you giving up a Saturday afternoon to watch us play, that's incredibly flattering.
Alex, see you on the 6th kid.
Saturday, September 1, 2007
Heads Up Challenge, the preview...
So, as those of you who are part of the Elite Poker Community are probably well aware by all our trash talk, a good friend of mine, Alex, has challenged me to a heads up match(actually best 2 of 3), with prop bet stakes.
Him being a die hard fan of the Leafs, and myself a die hard Habs fan, the prop bet is simply the loser has to wear the winner's hockey jersey(he owns a Darcy Tucker Leafs jersey, I own a Carey Price Habs jersey) to an event.
Time to up the ante, I'm going to use this spot to publicly re-issue the challenge with a date, time, and overall overview of the challenge as I see it now :
Date : Sunday, September 16th, The Collin's Brewhouse, prior to the event there at noon.
Time : This we'll have to work out in some more detail, I'm figuring 10am or in that range. They make a breakfast so we can grab breakfast and then head down for the game.
Stakes : Upped. Loser has to wear the jersey to BOTH events on that Sunday(The Collin's immediately after, and then Bobby D's that night)
There ya go Alex, your move kid.
As for the poker side of the blog? It actually kind of offers a preview of what anyone watching can expect to see.
Last night I headed over to Alex's house after he got off work, and naturally we sat right down at the poker table. The truth of all this is, all trash talk aside, I consider Alex as good a player as I've sat at a live table with, so it's always fun to test yourself against a player of that calibre. Our heads-up matches are always interesting at the very least, we both play well, at least I feel, and we both take it very seriously(it'll be alot more serious on the prop bet day).
We decided to settle in for a long battle and really test ourselves against each other, so we sat with 300,000 in chips, and started the blinds at 100/200, moving up every 15 minutes.
We played a little bit of small pot poker, he probably grabbed around a 6000 chip edge off of me after about a half hour, when the first big hand came up, and a hand I feel was probably a mistake to try, but I put him on the range his hand ended up being in, and thought I could push him off of it. Instead, he saw through it and I bluffed off alot of my stack.
The hand, I was button, blinds 200/400, and looked at Jc/10h, and raised to 1200. He re-raised to 2400. I called. Flop was As/3s/7d. He bet out 3000, I called. It was at this time I had decided he was only a weak ace. Alex plays a very tricky heads up game and I felt that if he had a big ace, or two pair, he'd be checking here. He didn't even necessarily need an ace to bet here, he could be on something like 99, 10/10 although that was also unlikely with the small re-raise preflop. I called figuring I'd steal this pot on a later street. The turn was a real nice card for bluffing, the 10s, completing a flush draw. He checked. I fired out 7500. He re-raised to 17,000. Again I still didn't change my opinion on his range here, I still figured him for a weak ace, and he was just testing because he'd have been aware that's a good card for me to bluff at. So, I re-raised back again, to 30,000 total. He went into the tank for a long time, before finally calling. Pot was 78,000. The river was a 9d. He checked again, and at this time I was pretty sure he felt like he was behind, but I had to make one more stab here, a healthy bet, or else this play was all meaningless. So, I grabbed 60,000 and bet it at the pot. He went into the tank for basically just shy of forever, and eventually sniffed out the move and called with A/2. It's a great call, unless you ask me about it when he's in the room, in which case I'll swear only a donkey calls in that spot.
After that I was stuck alot, and decided to switch it up, I got down a little further, to where he had about a 2.5 to 1 lead on me, when we played a nice series of hands all within a fairly short span.
Blinds eventually worked up to 500/1000 when I started to work my way back. I looked at the same hand again, J/10, and raised out of the button again to 3000, he called. Flop was Qc/8c/9h. Gin. He checked, I bet out hoping I'd get a bit of action. It's always awkward betting the nuts headsup, but I figured I had to see if I'd get any play here. I bet 4000. He called. Turn was a 3s. He tried what may have been a delayed pro-bet effort here, and fired at this street, 10,000. I smoothe called. River was pretty terrible, 10d. Action killer. He checked, I bet 15,000, and he called. I showed the J for the win and scooped the pot.
The very next hand(blinds went up to 1000/2000) I was BB, he limped in, and I checked out of the BB with 6d/2h. You know when you flop the nuts heads-up, how rare that is? Doing it twice in a row was a little crazy. 6/6/6 flop. He checked and I checked. The turn was a 2. That's a nice card, potentially in his range, plus now it's just funny to me that that's the board while I'm holding 6/2. He does bet, 4000. I call. River is an 8. He checks, I bet 11,000 at the 12,000 pot. He tanks for a minute and calls with ace high.
Eventually, after a few more small pots, I had worked myself back from the 2.5 to 1 edge he ran off to, to dead even in chips, or relatively close, we were within 5000 of each other again.
Closing in on 3 hours into the heads-up match, still practically dead even. This was the last hand we played :
Blinds 2000/4000. He calls out of the SB. I look at KK. Beautiful. I check. The flop is a little dirty, As/7d/7h. Not a great flop at all for my slow played Kings. The Ace is actually irrelevant here, there is no way Alex limped with an ace. The 7 does kind of concern me. He checks. I bet 6000. He calls. Turn is a Queen. That's a nice card, depending on how the hand plays out from here. He checks again, and I bet again, 10,000. He raises now, to 22,000. I'm a little worried about the 7's still, and I see the ace as an absolute brick. In my mind, the only way Alex has an ace after limping from the SB at a high blind level, is if he has two of them, in which case I was just meant to lose this hand. I re-raise back to 75,000. He goes into the tank for a few minutes and then calls after some silly speech about pocket pairs(to me I'm thinking "good he has the queen"). The river is a Jack. He bets out a fairly weak bet now. The pot is 170,000, we both still have around 200,000 infront of us, and he bets 75,000. This puts me in a bind because it both looks weak, and strong. That's a weak bet at the pot, but betting just under half of your chips is fairly strong. So now I go into the tank for a while, before I decide I still feel like he has a Queen here, something like KQ, and doesn't buy me for the ace because I didn't raise either. There's still that nagging chance he has a 7, but I decide to shove over anyway and if he has a 7, just suck it up. In retrospect this was a fairly large mistake, I'm only getting called by hands that have me beat, except maybe a Queen. In any event, he insta-calls and shows that it was probably just fate that lost me that hand. AA. Nearly 3 hours of poker to get coolered. Played out on a weird board that maybe could have gotten me away from it, but I don't think my thought process through the hand was faulty until my river shove.
After that grinding session, we sat down, watched the Blue Jays nearly blow a game to the Mariners save for a pretty sexy little double play to end it with bases loaded and 1 out. Then re-watched UFC 74 since he hadn't seen it(Roger Huerta is my hero for his screen staring elbows moment on that card), and then played some Nintendo Wii, which, as if he didn't run good enough during the poker game, he crushes me at Wii-Tennis which he's some form of superman at. Then we switch to baseball where I promptly beat him. He declares best 2 of 3 and wins the next one, and then just like always, running so good, he hits a 2 out, 2 strike, 2 run HR in the bottom of the 3rd(last inning on Wii-Baseball) to come from behind and win by one run.
Good night, some fun, the heads up match was alot of fun. Frankly I could have wrote for hours about it, there were alot of hands where we were just playing some real fun poker. There was one hand in particular on where we actually got to a 4-bet on the river(raise, re-raise, re-raise, re-raise) when we were both playing the board(I put in the last raise and scooped the pot). It's always fun testing yourself against a high calibre player.
Him being a die hard fan of the Leafs, and myself a die hard Habs fan, the prop bet is simply the loser has to wear the winner's hockey jersey(he owns a Darcy Tucker Leafs jersey, I own a Carey Price Habs jersey) to an event.
Time to up the ante, I'm going to use this spot to publicly re-issue the challenge with a date, time, and overall overview of the challenge as I see it now :
Date : Sunday, September 16th, The Collin's Brewhouse, prior to the event there at noon.
Time : This we'll have to work out in some more detail, I'm figuring 10am or in that range. They make a breakfast so we can grab breakfast and then head down for the game.
Stakes : Upped. Loser has to wear the jersey to BOTH events on that Sunday(The Collin's immediately after, and then Bobby D's that night)
There ya go Alex, your move kid.
As for the poker side of the blog? It actually kind of offers a preview of what anyone watching can expect to see.
Last night I headed over to Alex's house after he got off work, and naturally we sat right down at the poker table. The truth of all this is, all trash talk aside, I consider Alex as good a player as I've sat at a live table with, so it's always fun to test yourself against a player of that calibre. Our heads-up matches are always interesting at the very least, we both play well, at least I feel, and we both take it very seriously(it'll be alot more serious on the prop bet day).
We decided to settle in for a long battle and really test ourselves against each other, so we sat with 300,000 in chips, and started the blinds at 100/200, moving up every 15 minutes.
We played a little bit of small pot poker, he probably grabbed around a 6000 chip edge off of me after about a half hour, when the first big hand came up, and a hand I feel was probably a mistake to try, but I put him on the range his hand ended up being in, and thought I could push him off of it. Instead, he saw through it and I bluffed off alot of my stack.
The hand, I was button, blinds 200/400, and looked at Jc/10h, and raised to 1200. He re-raised to 2400. I called. Flop was As/3s/7d. He bet out 3000, I called. It was at this time I had decided he was only a weak ace. Alex plays a very tricky heads up game and I felt that if he had a big ace, or two pair, he'd be checking here. He didn't even necessarily need an ace to bet here, he could be on something like 99, 10/10 although that was also unlikely with the small re-raise preflop. I called figuring I'd steal this pot on a later street. The turn was a real nice card for bluffing, the 10s, completing a flush draw. He checked. I fired out 7500. He re-raised to 17,000. Again I still didn't change my opinion on his range here, I still figured him for a weak ace, and he was just testing because he'd have been aware that's a good card for me to bluff at. So, I re-raised back again, to 30,000 total. He went into the tank for a long time, before finally calling. Pot was 78,000. The river was a 9d. He checked again, and at this time I was pretty sure he felt like he was behind, but I had to make one more stab here, a healthy bet, or else this play was all meaningless. So, I grabbed 60,000 and bet it at the pot. He went into the tank for basically just shy of forever, and eventually sniffed out the move and called with A/2. It's a great call, unless you ask me about it when he's in the room, in which case I'll swear only a donkey calls in that spot.
After that I was stuck alot, and decided to switch it up, I got down a little further, to where he had about a 2.5 to 1 lead on me, when we played a nice series of hands all within a fairly short span.
Blinds eventually worked up to 500/1000 when I started to work my way back. I looked at the same hand again, J/10, and raised out of the button again to 3000, he called. Flop was Qc/8c/9h. Gin. He checked, I bet out hoping I'd get a bit of action. It's always awkward betting the nuts headsup, but I figured I had to see if I'd get any play here. I bet 4000. He called. Turn was a 3s. He tried what may have been a delayed pro-bet effort here, and fired at this street, 10,000. I smoothe called. River was pretty terrible, 10d. Action killer. He checked, I bet 15,000, and he called. I showed the J for the win and scooped the pot.
The very next hand(blinds went up to 1000/2000) I was BB, he limped in, and I checked out of the BB with 6d/2h. You know when you flop the nuts heads-up, how rare that is? Doing it twice in a row was a little crazy. 6/6/6 flop. He checked and I checked. The turn was a 2. That's a nice card, potentially in his range, plus now it's just funny to me that that's the board while I'm holding 6/2. He does bet, 4000. I call. River is an 8. He checks, I bet 11,000 at the 12,000 pot. He tanks for a minute and calls with ace high.
Eventually, after a few more small pots, I had worked myself back from the 2.5 to 1 edge he ran off to, to dead even in chips, or relatively close, we were within 5000 of each other again.
Closing in on 3 hours into the heads-up match, still practically dead even. This was the last hand we played :
Blinds 2000/4000. He calls out of the SB. I look at KK. Beautiful. I check. The flop is a little dirty, As/7d/7h. Not a great flop at all for my slow played Kings. The Ace is actually irrelevant here, there is no way Alex limped with an ace. The 7 does kind of concern me. He checks. I bet 6000. He calls. Turn is a Queen. That's a nice card, depending on how the hand plays out from here. He checks again, and I bet again, 10,000. He raises now, to 22,000. I'm a little worried about the 7's still, and I see the ace as an absolute brick. In my mind, the only way Alex has an ace after limping from the SB at a high blind level, is if he has two of them, in which case I was just meant to lose this hand. I re-raise back to 75,000. He goes into the tank for a few minutes and then calls after some silly speech about pocket pairs(to me I'm thinking "good he has the queen"). The river is a Jack. He bets out a fairly weak bet now. The pot is 170,000, we both still have around 200,000 infront of us, and he bets 75,000. This puts me in a bind because it both looks weak, and strong. That's a weak bet at the pot, but betting just under half of your chips is fairly strong. So now I go into the tank for a while, before I decide I still feel like he has a Queen here, something like KQ, and doesn't buy me for the ace because I didn't raise either. There's still that nagging chance he has a 7, but I decide to shove over anyway and if he has a 7, just suck it up. In retrospect this was a fairly large mistake, I'm only getting called by hands that have me beat, except maybe a Queen. In any event, he insta-calls and shows that it was probably just fate that lost me that hand. AA. Nearly 3 hours of poker to get coolered. Played out on a weird board that maybe could have gotten me away from it, but I don't think my thought process through the hand was faulty until my river shove.
After that grinding session, we sat down, watched the Blue Jays nearly blow a game to the Mariners save for a pretty sexy little double play to end it with bases loaded and 1 out. Then re-watched UFC 74 since he hadn't seen it(Roger Huerta is my hero for his screen staring elbows moment on that card), and then played some Nintendo Wii, which, as if he didn't run good enough during the poker game, he crushes me at Wii-Tennis which he's some form of superman at. Then we switch to baseball where I promptly beat him. He declares best 2 of 3 and wins the next one, and then just like always, running so good, he hits a 2 out, 2 strike, 2 run HR in the bottom of the 3rd(last inning on Wii-Baseball) to come from behind and win by one run.
Good night, some fun, the heads up match was alot of fun. Frankly I could have wrote for hours about it, there were alot of hands where we were just playing some real fun poker. There was one hand in particular on where we actually got to a 4-bet on the river(raise, re-raise, re-raise, re-raise) when we were both playing the board(I put in the last raise and scooped the pot). It's always fun testing yourself against a high calibre player.
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