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.