Got into in from late position with [kx qx] on a [jx tx 7x] flop. Pre-flop there are three of us in for 625 each. Post-flop, SB leads out with a bet of 1,400, gets a call, and I re-raise to 3,400 with the open-ended straight draw. SB pushes all-in for less than I have left, seat nine goes all-in with enough to cover me, and I call. It’s my draw against two sets: SB has [jx jx], the other caller has [tx tx]. I’m actually in better shape to win it all than the tens (it’s 27%/69%/4%, but no ace or nine shows, the jacks triple up, and the tens take the rest of my chips. At least I saved myself the cost of an add-on tonight.
Fifty-five minutes. -100% ROI. 59th of 61 players.
Not a big crowd but just a hideous downpour while we were mostly five-handed on two tables. I laid down twice to the same player’s all-in, with him showing total air both times. Didn’t get a chance to put him to the test before I was eliminated with [8x 8x] v [ax ax].
A very strange night of poker. Eight players at last night’s game and despite a blind structure that starts off with 20 minutes of 10/20 (90 big blinds) there seemed to be some pent-up aggression among the gang. Several all-ins in the first round of the button. I forced DV to re-buy less than fifteen minutes after play began, and brought on two more re-buys in a single hand ten minutes later. WA had barely gotten his re-buy chips settled when he went up against B and was knocked out of the tournament just half an hour after we started.
Things settled down for about forty minutes, the re-buy period ended, then three more players bit the dust over the course of half an hour that included a ten-minute break. We were barely into level 5 and we were already three-handed.
With the blinds still at only 50/100 and average stacks of more than 7,500, people had plenty of time to pick their spots. Despite my having taken out three players, I was the short stack, because everyone I’d knocked out was already somewhat depleted. I was bleeding chips to VD looking for my opening. Finally, I hit Broadway on the flop with an [ax jx] and VD called my all-in with two pair. I was sitting pretty on nearly half the chips until I managed to double VD up twice, then it was me on life support. Nearly two hours went by between the fourth-place elimination and my eventual fall to DV after three-and-a-half hours of play. Another fifteen minutes and VD fell to him as well.
Three-and-a-half hours. +43% ROI. 3rd of 8 players.
I got into the game just as the button was finishing its first trip around the ten-handed table and was seated at black table 2 seat 5, with a couple regulars I knew by sight on either side of me. There’d been some significant action already, with one player in the middle of a re-buy as I took my place. Seat 6 welcomed me to an interesting table.
It got even more interesting in short order when a player sat down in empty seat 2 and started complaining that she couldn’t get her chair closer to the table—always a problem when they’re ten-handed. She was jerky and abrasive, and seemed a bit amped-up as she demanded the table be squared up. The dealer and several of us mentioned that we were squared, with the cupholder across from the dealer right between me and seat 6. Seat 3 suggested moving the chair for the currently-empty seat 1 back from the table and she responded by saying someone could be sitting there soon. She got up from the table after the button went past and stalked off. Eventually, the floor director came back when she was there and she brought the subject up again. He just pulled the chair in seat 1 back and that settled the matter for the moment.
Things only got nuttier when a guy showed up for seat 1. From the way things had gone a little earlier, you might have expected fireworks to fly but suddenly seat 2 was cordial as hell, at least to the guy in seat 1. Seat 1 started flinging in raises and raking in chips, and nobody was in much of a mood to push back. I can’t remember at what point seat 2 went all-in but she got stomped and rebought, which didn’t seem to make her mood much better.
Some of the other players’ suspicions were tracking along with mine, and someone asked if seat 1 knew seat 2 (not that most of the people regularly playing in a $100+ buy-in game in Portland don’t know most of the other players by sight, at least) and he claimed anything but the sort, pointing down to an older player in seat 8 who’d just put in a raise and exclaiming: “But this guy, I know this guy….”
Not too long after that, seat 8 was working on his action (seat 9 and 10 were out pre-flop) when seat 1 jumped in with a raise and the dealer tried to redirect. Seats 1 and 2 got puffed up and started jabbering on about how it was up to the player to keep action from passing them by and the rest of the table weighed in that acting out of turn wasn’t proper procedure. According to Roberts’ Rules of Poker:
To retain the right to act, a player must stop the action by calling “time” (or an equivalent word). Failure to stop the action before three or more players have acted behind you may cause you to lose the right to act.
So they were wrong about the action moving on because there hadn’t been enough players acting behind seat 8 but more importantly:
Deliberately acting out of turn will not be tolerated.
If seat 1 knew seat 8 hadn’t acted, then the action was deliberate, which is a penalty offense. The second time he did it, the dealer warned him.
None of that had anything to do with me. I was doing reasonably well at the break, up a little from the starting stack. I went out and talked to JB and a guy in a brony shirt in the rain. JB was sitting right behind me on black 1 and not long after things got started a couple players at the high end of the table were knocked out and the brony guy joined us. I went long for a straight draw that I had to fold when a second ace hit the board. Brony flipped pocket aces. Two hands later on BTN, I raised all-in withb [2x 2x] but my stack didn’t have much in the way of power to blow anyone off. I got called by the brony who had an ace high. I got a full house but it was aces over deuces, which made two quad ace hands for the brony. Can’t argue with that kind of luck.
Two and a half hours. -100% ROI. 54th of 71 players.
Seated at table 1, seat 1. Picked up on the first hand and raised, getting several callers. Had a couple of over cards on the [kx qc 4x] flop and bet again, narrowing the competition down to two. The rest of the board put out a king-high straight sans a jack and we all sat tight. I flipped over my pair, both the others had low aces.
The very next hand was [ax ax]. I called an all-in by seat 2 by the turn, with three clubs on the board. He had [kc 6x] with the six paired on the flop, but no club hit the river and I was up to 20,000.
I got streaks of the same ranks of cards in short order. I raised with [7s 8s] and made two pair on the flop to win a small pot.
On the next hand, I got [7c 8c] and had the top end of the straight on the board by the turn. I pushed hard, and was all-in against seat 9 who also flipped [7x 8x] for a chop.
The third time I got [kx 9x] in a row, I played it and hit top pair on the flop but got beat by a set of twos. Still, at 45 minutes I had 18,000 chips.
The last hand before the first break proved to be my undoing (again). I had [ax jx] in late position, raised to 750 with several callers, then hit an ace on the flop. Seat 3 and I bet into each other with a pause as a queen showed on the turn. I should have gotten away, but tried to push him off with a large bet on the river. He called and showed [ax kx] and I was knocked down to 8,500. The same player took me out not long after with another [ax kx] against my [ah 8h].
80 minutes. -100% ROI. 49th of 55 players.
Aces Players Club Shootout (50 BB)
Got into it early (after waiting more than ten minutes for A couple players to come back from a pre-game break in the bar) and lost 35 BB in a hand with [qx 9z] v [qx qx] with the case queen as the high on the flop.
I managed to double up with two pair, then my own pocket queens ran into a set of eights and I was gone.
Started the day off well with a win, then played three more tournaments without a cash.
Encore Club Noon $1,000 Guarantee (5,000 chips)
Got chopped down in the early going of the game and rebought after I lost a race. The second starting stack went a little better. The field was small—only going to three tables—and I started to pick up some momentum, holding over 50,000 chips (out of about 180,000) while we were still at two tables. By the third break, I had more than half the chips in play at the final table, with seven or eight players in. Just missed taking two players out at once with [8x 8x]; both of them had aces and managed to catch one on the board. I was still chip leader at four players—even after losing 22,000 in another attempt to knock a player out—when a chop was proposed with me taking 30% of the pot and the other players splitting the rest. Didn’t keep notes, walked out without tipping for the first time—got distracted by a need for food—and forgot to take a screen photo.
Four hours. +200% ROI. first of about 26 players.
Encore Club $1,800 Guarantee (8,000 chips)
Made a horrible misread early on and thought I was getting bluffed by an ace when I was holding fourth pair on with [5c 6c] the turn. I’d put in a bet of 1,500 and it was down to just two of us with a bunch of chips in the middle, but he shoved and my call revealed his aces. At least I wasn’t the first one eliminated.
30 minutes. -100% ROI. 40th of 43 players.
Portland Players Club $200 Guarantee (2,000 chips)
It was hopping at PPC with ten-handed action right off at a couple of tables. Lost big with a ragged ace that could have filled up two different straights on the river but didn’t and I was out shortly thereafter.
30 minutes. -100%ROI. 21st of 22 players.
Encore Club $500 Guarantee (5,000 chips)
Zipped back over to Encore in time for their last tournament of the night. This went a little better than the freezeout, but I still didn’t make the consolidation into two tables.
Schedules are tightening up. Prague’s going to require some really lucky hits in the next couple of weeks. This week’s tournament action didn’t get off to such a fine start.
Portland Players Club $250 Guarantee (2,000 chips)
Managed to double up with a Mutant Jack (spades) flush early on, but made a mistake with [kx 3x]. I had top pair and drawing possibilities to a low straight, but two other kings were in play, both with better kickers (surprise!) and they called by 4200 chip all-in, with the best of them hitting her queen on the turn.
Usually get the pants beat off me at D’s regular game, but for one reason or another we played a lot fewer hands with wild cards than we usually do and I managed to take down a couple of large pots, with nearly back-to-back queen-high full houses. I was up three full buy-ins and very close to another full house when I called an all-in from M—who’d just bought back in because I’d busted him—and I lost nearly a buy-in when I missed and his straight held.
Puffmammy Poker League Second Quarter Event (3,000 chips)
Just a friendly nine-handed game in the garage storage room at KN’s place. The structure’s pretty slow, but I got a little aggressive early on and was chopped down to half the starting stack (even after having a 600 chip pre-add-on and another couple hundred for early arrival and sign-up). Then I got lucky with a couple of hands and doubled up and put the pressure on to take out three players (which was great since we were collecting bounties) only to bubble out on the money. Got my bounties and a gift card for bubble prize.
