My Time Is Coming: Report 5 or Chinook Chinook

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Bovada 0.5/1 NLHE Zone 6-Max

A couple of 6-Max cash sessions before the PacWest 6-Max tournament. The first doesn’t go well. I’ve noticed that the guys who’ve cashed up in this game to $300+ (max buy-in is $100) tend to be overly aggressive, and I ran into one of those. I had [ts as] in BB and 3-bet to $9 over big stack’s $3 SB raise. I started the hand with under $40. SB calls me and after a [6s qd 7d] flop, bets $18. I go all-in for just under $30, pretty confident that it’s just a “go-away” bet, and he calls with [ac 3c]. Naturally, the turn is [3d]. I buy in again and get up to $75, then back down to $50 before I get it in against queens with [jh th] on a [ah qh 9s] flop. The next session goes a little better, no big hands, just a steady climb in the balance.

Session 1: Twenty-three minutes. 85 hands. -100BB.
Session 2: Twenty minutes. 102 hands. +81BB

PacWest Poker Classic #1 $50K NLHE 6-Max

All my practice was for naught. The first level went great, we were 4-handed most of the level. A lot of the tables were as they kept slots open for late registrants, and you could hear plaintive cries of “Are they going to fill the tables? Why don’t they break some tables and fill us up?” all around. Seriously, if you’re going to play a 6-Max tournament, complaining about short-handed play has to be on e of the cardinal sins. Anyway, I’d doubled my stack in the first 40 minutes, in part because of a player who’d tried to bluff me off kings with a pair of sevens, but I made a couple of bad calls, one against a Portland reg who called my [ax kx] BB raise from the SB with [jx 3x] and tripped up on the flop (I hit the stupid king on the turn), and another where I made trip tens with [tx 9x] but got crushed by a flush on the river from Kerry Moynahan. Another BB hand. Shot a second bullet after going all-in with a flush draw on [qd 9d] against [ad 8d] (great timing there, neither of us made even a pair). My last hand I raised [ac qc] from UTG to 1.5K at 250/500/100, got 4 callers, shoved 11.6K on a [qs 9s 5s] board, and go called by [ks 8h] which shouldn’t have even been in the hand, much less calling a 23BB shove for a third of his chips. The player next to me said “Good call” after the hand; I couldn’t tell if he meant it or if he just wanted to encourage that kind of play. Ah, well.

Three-and-a-half hours.

Bovada $20K NLHE 6-Max

Got into my room too late to late-reg for the Sunday $100K so I tried this event for the first time. Didn’t go much of anywhere.Made it to 58th (36 places paid)

Two hours and five minutes. 119 hands. 58th of 252 entries.

Bovada 0.5/1 NLHE Zone 6-Max

Played for a little bit before I headed back to the casino to check up on the tournament. Key hand: I had chipped up to over 80BB already, then called a 2.5x raise with [ks js] from a 400BB stack (see notes above). BB was along for the ride. I flopped an open-ended straight draw  [qs 2d tc], everyone checked, the turn was [9c], giving me the temporary nuts, and I bet $4 into $7.5. The original raiser pushes it to $15.50, and I raised to $45, which he called. With no club on the river ([2h]), I put in the last $36. Maybe he thinks I missed the flush draw, he calls and rolls over [jh 8h] for the lower straight. Then I got lucky and the buffet dinner for the poker players was still out at the casino.

Twenty minutes. 68 hands. +130BB

Bovada $5K NLHE Thousandaire Maker

No luck on this one.

Twenty-five minutes. 22 hands. Out before registration was closed.

Bovada 0.5/1 NLHE Zone 6-Max

Thought I might try to make my Thousandaire Maker buy-in back, but I ended up losing two buy-ins in quick succession. Lost most of one with [ah 3h] when I raised and got called by [7d jc] in SB. I flopped the flush draw and turned an ace, he flopped two pair. After the second loss, I put in a third, then managed to battle my way back to a profit for the session, though my Thousandaire buy-in is still out there somewhere.

Twenty-five minutes. 94hands. +3BB

Chinook Winds 1/3 NLHE

Went back (again) to the casino to see about playing some live cash and see if my skillz would translate over. I got on both the NLHE and Big O lists. I was holding my own in the NLHE game, up and down, then down a little more before I got the call to Big O.

Thirty-five minutes. -12BB

Chinook Winds 2/2 Big O

I haven’t played much Big O cash, but I’ve played a fair number of Big O tournaments (thanks, Chadd!) I often chip up well in the tournament, then bust either low in the moneyor out of the money, so when I got a big hand in this game, I made my escape plan. I’d lost one decent-sized pot with a flopped set of aces, but then I had the perfect storm, with a suited ace (of diamonds) a deuce and a three. The flop had two diamonds and two low cards, so when people started pushing chips, I was shoving everything in as fast as I could. I had to share the low, but the flush came in, and I racked up before my BB.

Fifty-five minutes. +162BB

Bovada 0.5/1 NLHE Zone 6-Max

Did some work back in the room, popped into the Zone, got up to 75BB, raised [qd qc], four-bet it, then called a five-bet shove from a larger stack with [as kc]. I hit a set on the flop and the king on the turn didn’t save him.

Twelve minutes. 46 hands. +106BB

PacWest Poker Classic #4 $7.5K NLHE

This was actually the second real tournament of the series: events 2 and 3 were Main Event satellites. It got a decent turnout for a Monday in the middle of February at the Oregon coast, doubling the guarantee after all of the re-entries. I got off to a decent start and then had an extremely good hand against the eventual third-place finisher, Steve Harper, where I managed to get him to call off half his stack of yellow 5K chips. Somehow, by the next time I looked over at his stack, he’d built it up even taller. I blame him for the hand that cost me a better placing in the tournament. I had more than 100K (at about the time I took the photo below), and found myself with [3d 5d] in the BB. Most of the pots were raised, and I fully expected to toss the cards, but Steve limped in late position, and the table chip leader (I was second at the time) limped along from SB. The flop was [tx 4d 2x], and when SB made a bet of 6K, I had the bright idea to raise to 20K. Steve ditched, but SB called, we checked the [3x] on the turn and I whiffed the river. We showed down and he had [ax tx]. If the river had been an ace, I think I might have gotten some more value out of that. I mean, instead of losing. I had an extended period of card-deaded-ness after that, hanging out in the <10BB space for the rest of the tournament. Made the final table and missed out on the opportunity to quadruple up (because it would have required me to go all-in with [jx tx] offsuit behind a raise and two all-ins), eventually getting it in with a king-high hand against an ace and a stack that could easily call my 4BB.

Ten-and-a-half hours. 8th of 129 entries. +297% ROI.

PacWest #4 $7.5K

Bovada $1K NLHE Super Turbo

Played this because I wanted to do something irrelevant financially late at night.

Thirty minutes. 121st of 184 entries.

Encore Club $8K NLHE

Got to the club at the first break, got stuck in the Batcave with a bunch of other late entries and chipped up a bit before the table broke. By the second break, I had about 50% more chips than average after knockout out a player who’d been at my 6-Max table on Sunday, Made a speculative call after dropping down a bit against an all-in with about a quarter of my stack when I was in the BB with [9x tx]. Never managed to pick it back up and went out with [kc tc].

Three hours and forty minutes. 35th of 149 entries.

20160224 Encore $8K

Bovada $500 PLO8 Bounty

Had an early start on this game, when I flushed out against another player. He was knocked down to 320 chips but by the time I was out, he’d built up to over 10K.

Thirty minutes, 21 hands. 32nd of 36 entries.

Bovada 0.5/1 NLHE Zone 6-Max

I’d just been saying to a friend that I felt I was almost being set up by making as much as I had off of this game, then went on a 6 buy-in downswing. Managed to get most of it back. The last session was just insane. I’d set a plan for myself to get out if I got up to a 2 buy-in profit, I got close three different times, dropping back as low as below my initial buy-in twice, before I finally managed to close it out.

Nine sessions, two hundred minutes, 849 hands. -10BB

Bovada 0.25/0.5 Omaha Hi-Lo

Wanted to play a little limit, and it didn’t go well.

Fourteen minutes, 7 hands. -10 big bets.