Score!

For some reason I didn't feel compelled to post my WSOP report on this blog - but you can click here and check it out if you like.

As for this particular post, I'm happy to report that I recently had my biggest cash in 3 years.  It took place at the lovely Hollywood Park Casino (soon to be demolished and moved next door to a brand new facility) on a Friday at noon.  It was a 10K guarantee that, according to the floor, never has a problem meeting this amount; lots of people playing hooky from work I guess!

I didn't tweet the tournament, and now I'm kind of wishing I had because it has been several weeks and I'm afraid the details will be a bit sparse.

I bought in for $60 and there was also a $60 add-on which I ended up not doing, which is not at all like me.  I had a substantial pile of chips at the break, and I thought to myself, self, if I end up cashing in this thing (which looks pretty likely) I would love to have a bigger profit.  Not really logical or mathematically sound, but there it is.

Stack at the break. 

I recall getting into a number of hands that I played well, including two reasonably large pots that I had to bluff at to win; but by and large my play pre-break was fairly ABC.  I had told myself that I wasn't going to get too tricky, because trying to get the typical HPC tournament regular off of a medium strength hand is almost always a bad idea.

The two biggest pots I dragged both involved me flopping a set in multi-way pots, and then getting all the chips in with two players calling!  Both times my hand faded a big draw and also was crushing a top pair from the other player who was all in.

So yes, I was hit by the deck, but also my opponents were very soft in their propensity to not believe me and call off with top pair or some such.  Thankfully, I have gotten pretty good at sizing my bets to get maximum value.  Not once in the entire tournament did I slow play a flopped big hand.  Simply putting my foot on the gas was more than enough to get paid by the skeptical players with weak holdings or sometimes no holdings at all.

After the first break there was still a long ways to go; and here's where I start remembering a few hands.  One in particular that allowed me to nearly triple up and become the table chip leader.

Blinds were probably around 300/600, and I had around 60 bigs when I looked down at QQ in the small blind.   Or rather, I should say, I looked down at QQ after the flop, because recently I have taken to limping all of my small blinds when I am at 30 or more big blinds.  In other words, if it is limped to me, I don't even look at my cards pre-flop.  (I do pretend to look if I'm at a table where anyone is paying attention.)

Yes, this may seem a bit wacky, but I really think that being in the SB is such a HUGE disadvantage that even with a premium pair there are still a million ways to lose and short of flopping a monster - a surprisingly few ways to win, even if the hand goes to showdown.

By limping every SB I am balancing my range, and even though the majority of HPC players are not that good, many will still be able to narrow my range of hands considerably if it is limped to me and then I put out a sizable raise.

Now if there has been a raise behind me, all bets are off so to speak, and I look at my cards and of course re-raise if they are strong enough to warrant it.  I have to be pretty deep to flat and also be sure that I'm not going to get 4-bet by players on my left.

Anyways, the hand; it was all hearts and low cards on the flop. There were 4 players total in the hand, including the button, the big blind and a guy in the middle.  I checked, the big blind led out and it was folded around to me.  I called, having a queen of hearts and I was also very aware that my hand was likely good.

A black jack peeled off on the turn.  The plan was to check call. My opponent bet large this time, almost the full pot.  I suspected that the turn had helped him, his sudden change in sizing from a bit less than half pot on the flop and now to almost a full pot bet just screamed strength.

For a moment I  thought about re-raising, which would commit me to the hand, but then I really thought about it.  Yes there was a good chance he had AJ with a heart, but something about this guy also really led me to believe that he had a super strong range here - like aces or kings or some such.  He had been playing very passively and had gotten paid off earlier when he flopped the world.  Again the pattern had been the same, he led out when he flopped top pair (I think he had A9 or similar) and then bet very big on the turn when he tripped up.

So I stuck with my original plan and called.  At this point I had maybe 40 bigs behind, it would suck if I had to let this one go having stuck a third of my stack in, but I already told myself that I wasn't folding if a heart peeled on the river.  If he had the K or A of hearts than good for him.

And yes, a heart did hit the river.  The king of hearts.  A fantastic card, but if my opponent had AJ (or AK or AA for that matter) with the ace of hearts I was going broke.  Weirdly it did make sense that all of these premium holdings were in his range. My plan was to check raise jam.

 I checked, and he thought, and fired a very small bet, maybe a third of the pot.  Well this sucked, because now a jam by me was a bit preposterous, more than the size of the pot.  But then I thought about it - if he had AK, AJ, AA, KK, KJ or even better, low cards with a heart or maybe 1010, 99, 88 with a heart, I could get paid.  Plus, he had already put not a small amount of money into the pot.  So I went with the check raise jam.

He snap called.  I gulped.  "I guess this is no good..." I sighed as I turned up my queen high flush.  "No, you're good" he said disgustedly, and then in beautiful HPC style that I know so well he held up his cards as if to look at them, then popped them with a flick of his finger, then showed them to his neighbor on his left and then shook his head and slowly mucked his cards face up.  JsJh.

He had turned a set, hence the big ass bet; and my read had been correct insofar as the turn had helped him a lot.  And yes, he was slow playing a premium, much as I had.  I dragged a big pot for more than a double up with all the pre-flop limpers and antes in the pot as well.

Yay.

I believe it was here that I became the table chip leader, and didn't relinquish that for the rest of the tournament.  I would love to say that from this point on I cranked up the aggression and expertly kept accumulating by applying pressure in a lot of hands.  But the truth is, that with several hours still ahead of us before the money, I didn't get involved unless I was in position and had at least some equity in my hand.  If I raised pre, got several callers (which was typical), I wouldn't necessarily c-bet if I whiffed the flop.  I had been here before, and had spewed off my chips unnecessarily more times than I would like to admit - this time my chips were pretty much on lock down.

Thankfully, this wasn't that difficult, as most of my opponents played way too tight and revealed the strength of their holdings with their bet sizes or post flop flatting.  Again and again and again I saw the pre-flop over-bet with QQ, JJ, etc.  Again and again and again, I was able to deduce when someone had connected hard with the flop and get away with minimal damage.

Also, though I didn't catch many premiums (I remember getting AA in the whole tournament once, alas no action), I did have enough medium pairs, tasty suited connectors and broadway cards in position to get into hands and take them down often enough that my stack hardly ever shrank, but rather grew as the time passed.  One pot in particular I had K10 on the button, called a middle position player's pre-flop raise, flopped 2 pair and he stacked off with TPTK.

Yes, I was in the zone.  But I also had to get lucky, and I did mainly because I can't recall losing any crucial 60/40s when I was the 60.  Every time I needed to have my hand hold up or face a big loss of chips, it did.  I have played enough tournaments to know that is pretty unusual.   I did lose a few here and there, and also got my money in bad a few times and lost, but never in a pot of any real consequence.   On one hand my AQ got unlucky and ran into a short stacked AK, but then I got super lucky and sucked out on him with 2 pair on the river.  He was not pleased.  But he had also hardly played any hands and I had maybe an 8 to 1 chip lead over him.  I was never folding AQ to him, ever, even knowing there was a good chance I was behind.

And so the money came and went, we were down to just over 2 tables.  When we finally colored up the 500s, I was the tournament chip leader.

Pretty dope yo.

At this point, the average stack was a bit under 20 big blinds.  I had almost 80.  I felt pretty darn good.  Once the bubble had burst, the shorties quickly dropped or doubled and tripled up to hang in there.

We had started at noon, the final table formed just before 6pm.  Two other big stacks could hurt me, but I still had them covered.  Several medium stacks wouldn't feel good if they doubled through me, but they were not that scary.  And then there were 3 or 4 micro stacks that were all asking for an ICM count.  We agreed to run the numbers - I would be getting over $2500 if we chopped.  First place money in a normal payout was $3200, but $2500 would be awesome because no one was super deep at this point, I had maybe 45 big blinds. So I enthusiastically voted yes, but two guys, who happened to be rather obnoxious, voted this down.  They both had medium stacks.

So we played on and I busted a nice fellow on my left who happened to be in a wheel chair and had obviously suffered some kind of stroke.   He demeanor changed from affable to pissed off when my Ah6h turned a flush against his AJ, and he basically tried to run me over as he spun on his wheels to get to the payout desk.  I of course was deferential to him because of his condition, but I also remembered that I should be kind no matter what he looked like - read this post to see what I mean.

(Incidentally, the man in the wheel chair in that post was Garrett Greer, a tournament pro with over 3 million dollars in earnings and a 2nd place finish in this year's millionaire maker at the WSOP.  He hadn't broken through back in 2011, so I had no idea who he was at the time.)

So then there were six, then five and then finally four.  We had run the numbers for an ICM chop again, twice, at this point.  And still, both of the negative guys had turned it down.  One was now short stacked and the other unfortunately had doubled up.   I was still the chip leader.   I almost said 'no' to running the numbers again, but then thought better.

I was to get $2640, so I of course agreed.  After some squabbling and wheeling and dealing, the short stack managed to convince me to give him $100, we finally agreed, shook hands and cashed out.  It was 730pm.

Never had the 25K pinkies before.  So tasty.

So there it was, my biggest cash since 2010 I believe.  Very, very happy to fall into some real money for only $60.   I played very well, certainly not perfect, but I think the reason I managed to avoid spewage was that I most of the time kept it simple.  If I had zero equity post-flop, I let it go.  Just as important, I didn't enter a pot at all if I had garbage.   Getting tricky gets me into more trouble, especially against experienced regulars (whether they're good or not.)   I think this big win is a great lesson to me that more often than not good decisions, good fundamentals and patience will win the day, especially against weaker opponents.

I would like to say I have been crushing my home game this year as well, like I did last year when I won 4 out of 12 tournaments - alas my results haven't been nearly as good, though I have cashed in the top 3 a couple of times.  I think the main reason for my not as good results in my garage is me trying to get too tricky.  I have to remember, my image at Pepper St. is that of a maniac.  There's no reason for me to get involved with zero equity, I need to be more patient and wait for strong hands and then get my chips in and get paid.

But even with me leveling myself in my silly tournaments, I have to say, I think my game is stronger than ever; evidenced by my two WSOP cashes and this score here.  I am pretty much seeing the Matrix on a regular basis - and am comfortable against most opponents.   Here's hoping for another big score or two in the second half of 2016!