Made a final table

It's a nice cash for me, but its frustrating not to win. In fact, I was pretty frustrated for a lot of the tournament, as I had ImaLuckSac (a professional who normally plays much higher stakes) on my left from when there were 36 left until I busted. He was playing hella aggressive, opening a ton of pots pre-flop and 3-betting me light on several occasions. To wit, one of my first hands at his table I opened 99 in the cutoff, he 3-bet on the button, I shoved for 30 BBs effective and he folded. A couple orbits later I opened on the button, and he 3-bet K9s from the SB and ended up being committed vs the short stacked BB.

So him playing back that much prevented me from opening too light, and I played a solid game, won a big flip with AKs vs 99 and was up to 2nd in the tournament with 13 left. Then I opened the button and both blinds folded. Next hand, I opened in the cutoff with A8s, and sure enough I got 3-bet again by ImaLuckSac in the small blind. I started the hand with about 50 BBs and he had 35 BBs. I thought for a while but since he'd been so aggressive and since it was the 2nd hand I'd opened in a row, I decided 4-bet bluff him and shoved. Unfortunately for me he had JJ and I didn't get there. That left me with 15 BBs and one of the shortest stacks, but I doubled with AK vs AQ a few hands later and went to the final table in 5th out of 9 players:



At the final table I wasn't really getting cards, and on a shortish stack I couldn't really raise/fold especially with ImaLuckSac potentially shoving on me. I also had this maniac named Askesis on my right who was opening a ton of pots. I think I should have tried to re-steal more against him, thats definitely my biggest regret about this tournament.

When we got down to 5 left, ImaLuckSac and Askesis were the two massive chip leaders with 1.5 million, there was one guy with 700k, I had 360k and the short stack had 170k. Blinds were 15k/30k/3000 and it folded to Askesis in the SB. With two tables left, I had opened the other table and seen Askesis shove extremely light in late position with short stacks in the blinds, it seemed like he was shoving pretty much any two cards. I saw one hand where he shoved 14 BBs effective from the SB with J6o and lost to A7. So I figured he was shoving pretty much any two cards. And sure enough he shoved on me, and I had QTo. Now it may sound insane to even consider calling with a hand as weak at QTo, but I'm 57% against an any two cards range, and with the pot laying me odds it's certainly going to be a +chipEV call. The only concern is the presence of the short stack with 170k, who is likely to bust soon and guarantee me another $700. The thing is though, with my stack this short I'm going to have trouble finding better spots for two reasons. One is that Askesis has been opening a ton of pots and my stack is too short to have any fold equity, and another is that even when it does fold to me, ImaLuckSac is going to be calling my shoves much lighter than your average $25 MTT player. So I decided to gamble and called, and unfortunately lost to his A2o and busted 5th.

It's a decent cash but anything short of winning is definitely a disappointment. I'll probably get back into heads up cash the next few days, and be back at donkaments on Sunday.

Thanks for reading,

George

Heads Up Cash

Inspired by a fellow blogger's dominance of heads up cash, I've jumped into some 100NL HU and been doing pretty well so far:



It's a pretty massive adjustment between playing 9 handed MTTs and heads up cash, and I'm still making plenty of rookie mistakes, but I think I've improved a lot since I first started. When I first started with cash games I too often looked at the chips in front of me as real money and was scared at times to put all of it in the pot in marginal spots. But I'm past that now and I can just look at it as chips, a tool to make more money.

Another mistake I've been making is not quitting strong opponents. As a tournament player you cant change your table and have to find a way to beat tough opponents, but in cash games you can just leave the table and find a weaker opponent. This is something I need to do more.

It's been nice to take a break from the grind of tournaments; I definitely needed some time off from the 10 hour sessions that are necessary as a tournament player. I'm still a tourney donk at heart so I'll be playing more of those sometime soon, but heads up cash games have been a lot of fun, hopefully I can keep doing well.

Thanks for reading,

George

Boring Theory Post

Sorry for the lack of updates, I've been playing a lot recently but been too lazy to post for some reason.

Anyways, thanks to the bankroll boost from my $3r win, I've been playing at higher stakes online, in tournaments with buy-ins from $109 to $215. I've taken shots at these tournaments in the past and never been able to do much, but now for the first time I really feel comfortable at those stakes and that I belong.

It's certainly a big adjustment though. For one thing, at these stakes there are a lot of professionals, who obviously are very tough to play against. There are still plenty of bad players, but the bad players tend to be bad because they're overly aggressive. The biggest adjustment to my game has been to not open as much in late position. In lower stakes you can open any two in late position once the antes come in, but I've found you can't get away with that in these tournaments.

I've come up with a theory on why there are so many more wackjobs, its long but bear with me. Let's divide tournament poker players into 3 categories: good players, overly aggressive players, and overly nitty players. For the most part, the good players will eventually rise to the top, build their bankrolls, and move up in stakes. The overly nitty players will lose money over the long term; they might make the money in mtts a decent % of the time, but because they're folding too much they won't be able to accumulate enough chips to get the top 3 finishes you need to be a winning MTT player. So almost all of them will lose money and not make it out of the lower limits.

Now for the overly aggressive players, most of them will lose money because they'll flame out of tournaments early on due to their crazy play. But occasionally, guys like this will suck out a couple times, run up a massive stack, and then steamroll their way to a big cash. The difference between these guys and the nitty players is that the maniacs are at least giving themselves a chance to get lucky, while the nitty players are just folding away any chance. A quick glance at the WSOP Main Event over the last few years will show you plenty of overly aggro guys who didn't know what they were doing making deep runs, but very few weak tight nut-peddlers.

Meh, that whole thing feels rambling, hopefully it made sense. So I've been going up against a lot of these guys, no big cashes yet, hopefully one comes soon. Good luck to everyone playing the main event, especially the people I have a piece of.

Thanks for reading,

George