didn't go all that great. i think i was expecting to win another one which in the wacky world of multi's is not all that reasonable.
i funded my party account so i could play a couple tournies there. i started with the 6pm $33 which has a 5k guarantee. i probably won't play this tournament all too much but i wanted to get my feet wet with the party structure. i busted early 2nd hour with no real notable hands other than chopping a 3-way pot with one other player. we both had AKo, the 3rd player had KK and we sucked out and hit our 2 outer. i think i lost a race to go out.
i played the 7pm $109 on party also and when i looked up the players at my table in thepokerdb there was some massive winners. so maybe the tournament isn't as soft as i think it is but i'm still going to be playing it. for a clear indication on how bad the tourny structure is at party, i played one pot and stole the blinds in the first 45 mins and was down to 13.5bb's. after 45 mins of play and a 3k starting stack the blinds go to 100/200 which is pretty crazy. i think i play a mid to short stack well though so i believe i still have a good edge in this tournament. unfortunately the 2nd hand i played i shoved 10bb's w/ 99 and ran into AA for a gg and welcome back to party poker.
the 6pm on ftp was uneventful and i busted just before the first break
i went off again in the 7pm building a massive stack. i had 16k at 60/120 and was 2nd in chips only to go bust at the 200/400/50 level. i was playing pretty aggresively throughout trying to pick-up blinds and i got played back at a ton. so i was up and down between 11k and 15k before i made a steal attempt on a short stack in the bb. i raised w/ Q9s from mp and he shoved his 6bb's in with 33 and i lost that race. no big deal, it was a small pot for me right?
about one orbit later the short stack now has about 5k and raises from mp. i had 77 in the bb and re-shipped it in since he was playing a little laggy since doubling up. he snap called me for his whole stack w/ the powerhouse K6soooooooooooooted.
obv he flopped the world and i was down to 8k but still in good shape. the hand tilted me a bit and before i knew it i was raising his blind w/ A9o. he called and when he weak led the A hi flop i shoved and he called w/ AQ and it was gg me again.
he was now sitting on over 20k and i was bust. no more than 20 mins before i was sitting on 15k and he was clinging onto a measly 6bb's. this seems to be re-occuring practice for me, i double up the shorty and then later in the tournament he busts me.
since i had a stack in the 7pm i decided to take a shot at the $150 at 8pm. i was all over the place in this tournament and eventually busted in 121st out of 400+ players when i made a re-steal w/ 88 from the blinds and lost the race to AJs.
during the tournaments i also fired up some $55 and $110 turbo sng's. i played 3 $110's and bubbled two of them and didn't get close in the 3rd. out of 5 $55's i believe i ended up with 2 wins and a 3rd which helped balance the night out. i think i will stick to $55's for now until i get more comfortable and start showing a good profit in those.
not sure if i'll be playing online saturday but all signs are pointing towards a live session of 1/2 no-limit down at Niagara falls Casino. should be fun as the play is horrible and i usually get half in the bag while i play which makes for a fun time.
monday i will play quite a few tournies starting late in the afternoon and if im feeling froggy i might even hop into a satellite for the big 1k that night.
other than that i need to get ready for the few ftops events i'll be playing which means brushing up on my o8 and stud games.
tg
Friday, August 3, 2007
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
time to party
so i was talking to dtrain (pxf member) on aim the other day and told him how i was hoping to hit a nice score so i could put some money back on party poker and play their 7pm $109 20k guarantee.
well now that i hit the score i'm going to put 2k back on party to play this tourny. i mentioned in one of my first blogs about putting $500 on there this past spring and playing that tourny a couple times and taking it down once for a 5k+ score. 2k is obviously not a big enough roll to play a $109 tournament regularly but it's 2k im willing to gamble with.
the tournament is super soft. i'd say the play in it is equivalent to a $10 tournament on ftp. i guess my sample size is short but in the long run i truly believe this tournament can be a big money maker for me. it usually draws about 205-220 players so the field is very managable even though the party structure leaves something to be desired.
i guess the field is so soft cuz
1) party doesn't allow US players
2) a 7pm est time tournament might be a tad late for some of the big european players
3) a lot of the top Canadian players are probably chasing down bigger scores in the pokerstars $109 and the various rebuy tourny's.
anyways, im really excited to start playing on party again. the software is crap, the customer service is frustrating and they seem to freeze funds at will but it's where i started my online poker career and i guess there is just something about it that makes it feel like home. i think a lot of players have a soft spot in there heart for the site they first started on.
other than adding the $109 7pm and possibly the $33 6pm on party im going to stick to my regular schedule on ftp during week nights. since i work a regular day job i like to get to bed at a decent hour so i don't usually start any tournaments after the 7:15pm limit holdem. i might start playing the nightly $150 at 8pm occasionally and depending on field size the 20 rebuy at 7:30pm but thats about it.
on weekends i'll step it up and take a few shots at the higher buy-in tournaments like the $109 i won and $150's they run. i might mix in some rebuy tournaments but probably nothing higher than the 30 to start since im not crazy about rebuy tournaments.
as far as sunday majors go i'll probably be mia (missing in action) on most sundays as im usually spending it with family. i probably get to play on sunday once a month or so and when i do i will start playing the big sunday guarantee on ftp along with the mulligan. i'll also play the sunday 300k guarantee on party which starts at like 1pm est i believe.
i haven't really thought out whether i would buy-in direct to the big sundays or if i would try to satellite in. im a real nit so i think i'll probably at least play the huge satellite where they guarantee a whack a seats before directly buying-in. we'll see though.
i also looked over the ftops series and pretty much decided to stick with my original schedule. a lot of the tournaments are either 6-max, rebuy or both and im not really comfortable with those style of tournaments yet. the ones that i would think of playing have a $500+ buy-in and thats just way to high for me. so i'll probably stick to my original schedule and see how that goes.
i had never paid attention to the wcoop before since i never had a roll big enough and dislike stars in general. i looked over the schedule and there is really nothing there for me. i hate stars and the odd tournament that i would like to play starts before i typically get home from work. i also noticed on stars website that they have a weekly (or bi-weekly) $109 limit holdem tournament which intrigued me until i checked it out on the pokerdb and it only gets like 20 players.
im done rambling for now.
tg
well now that i hit the score i'm going to put 2k back on party to play this tourny. i mentioned in one of my first blogs about putting $500 on there this past spring and playing that tourny a couple times and taking it down once for a 5k+ score. 2k is obviously not a big enough roll to play a $109 tournament regularly but it's 2k im willing to gamble with.
the tournament is super soft. i'd say the play in it is equivalent to a $10 tournament on ftp. i guess my sample size is short but in the long run i truly believe this tournament can be a big money maker for me. it usually draws about 205-220 players so the field is very managable even though the party structure leaves something to be desired.
i guess the field is so soft cuz
1) party doesn't allow US players
2) a 7pm est time tournament might be a tad late for some of the big european players
3) a lot of the top Canadian players are probably chasing down bigger scores in the pokerstars $109 and the various rebuy tourny's.
anyways, im really excited to start playing on party again. the software is crap, the customer service is frustrating and they seem to freeze funds at will but it's where i started my online poker career and i guess there is just something about it that makes it feel like home. i think a lot of players have a soft spot in there heart for the site they first started on.
other than adding the $109 7pm and possibly the $33 6pm on party im going to stick to my regular schedule on ftp during week nights. since i work a regular day job i like to get to bed at a decent hour so i don't usually start any tournaments after the 7:15pm limit holdem. i might start playing the nightly $150 at 8pm occasionally and depending on field size the 20 rebuy at 7:30pm but thats about it.
on weekends i'll step it up and take a few shots at the higher buy-in tournaments like the $109 i won and $150's they run. i might mix in some rebuy tournaments but probably nothing higher than the 30 to start since im not crazy about rebuy tournaments.
as far as sunday majors go i'll probably be mia (missing in action) on most sundays as im usually spending it with family. i probably get to play on sunday once a month or so and when i do i will start playing the big sunday guarantee on ftp along with the mulligan. i'll also play the sunday 300k guarantee on party which starts at like 1pm est i believe.
i haven't really thought out whether i would buy-in direct to the big sundays or if i would try to satellite in. im a real nit so i think i'll probably at least play the huge satellite where they guarantee a whack a seats before directly buying-in. we'll see though.
i also looked over the ftops series and pretty much decided to stick with my original schedule. a lot of the tournaments are either 6-max, rebuy or both and im not really comfortable with those style of tournaments yet. the ones that i would think of playing have a $500+ buy-in and thats just way to high for me. so i'll probably stick to my original schedule and see how that goes.
i had never paid attention to the wcoop before since i never had a roll big enough and dislike stars in general. i looked over the schedule and there is really nothing there for me. i hate stars and the odd tournament that i would like to play starts before i typically get home from work. i also noticed on stars website that they have a weekly (or bi-weekly) $109 limit holdem tournament which intrigued me until i checked it out on the pokerdb and it only gets like 20 players.
im done rambling for now.
tg
Monday, July 30, 2007
ship me 16 dimes
played quite a bit on Saturday and won the 60k guarantee on ftp for a cool $16, 587.50!!!!!!!
it was such a sick tournament. i played my absolute best game ever and got rewarded big time w/ my biggest score.
it was pretty cool how the day layed out. i started at noon and played the 12pm $26 which i can't even remember how it went.
i played a couple of satellites into other tournaments like the winners choice and i think maybe an ftops event. i busted in both of those.
i played the 2pm $26 DS which got 1127 players and i went deep in this one. i played really well in this tournament and with massive blinds just kinda got unlucky to run AQ into AK when an active player made yet another lp raise. i finished that tournament 43rd for a $76 payday which was a little short of the 6k i was eyeing for 1st.
@ 2:30 i decided to play a $26 satellite into the $109 60k guarantee. it received 67 players and the top 14 paid seats. w/ 19 left i was 19th and w/ blinds of 250/500/25a i only had about 2k in chips. i've never really studied satellite strategy but i basically played it like a money bubble in a sng. i only shoved from lp w/ ok hands into stacks that would be crippled if they called me and luckily i managed to squeak through and ended up building a stack to secure my seat. it was a pretty slow brutal bubble as tons of guys were stalling and what not.
i played the 15k $55 at 3:30 and it went piss poor the whole way through. for some reason you get 2k chips to start this tournament instead of the usual 1.5k or 3k. i was down to 800 chips early, doubled to 1600 and then slowly spewed my way down to 1.2k before getting it all-in against a bad player that outplayed me. he limped in ep which was always doing, the sb completed and i checked my option w/ KsQx in the bb. the flop came QsTs3x, sb checked, i led out, limper min-raised, i shoved and he had AA.
the 4pm $75 was a bit of a horror show as i busted just before the 1st break. i chipped up to 2k, went down to 1.2k after losing a pot to GB2005 who was on my left. i then doubled through a guy w/ AA when i min-raised his standard 8x the bb open. i lost some chips and was down to 1.7k when a shorter stacked shoved for 800 utg and isolated w/ JJ. he had Tc8c and hit a flush on me to put me in trouble. the ending came when i shoved over an mp opener w/ 99 and i believe he had TT and i didn't suckout.
those tournaments brought me all the way up to 5:55 so i took a 5 min break before starting the 6pm $109 that i had satted into and the $26. im not very good at playing long stretches so im used to having a couple hour break on saturdays between my afternoon and evening sessions.
i have no idea what happened in the $26 6pm but opr tells me i busted 205th out of 635 players.
the $109 is a pretty big blur right now. im hoping to upload the hh to the pokerxfactor replayer so i'll just go over the main highlights of the tournament.
i started off good and worked my chips up to 4k before losing some pots and going down to around 2.4k. late in the 2nd hour i doubled a few times and started to get a reasonable stack together. i some how got a big stack and then took a pretty bad beat.
ep raised 3x, i re-raised from mp 3x his raise, it folded back to him and he shoved for a little bit more than my re-raise. i was in good shape w/ QQ vs KJ but he flopped a King and proceeded to tell me that KJ is his favorite hand and it never loses for him. sigh.
i rebuilt up again and actually remember making a few shoves so i must have been in the 10-15bb area. after shoving twice in previous orbits a big hand came up. mp raised and was cold called by another mp player. i shoved JJ from the sb since i would be committing a lot of chips with a re-raise and i would have to play the hand out of position. so i shoved and the initial raiser folded and the cold caller went into time bank. while he was thinking another player that wasn't even a part of the hand started telling this guy to call me. i went nuts and reported the idiot.
cold caller ended up calling w/ AQo and flopped a Q but i also flopped a J and took down a big pot. just as i finished reporting the idiot i got into a big pot with him.
he min-raised utg and i picked up AK on the button. i re-raised committing most of his stack and he thought for a while before just calling. the flop came down AJT and he opened shoved and i called. he had a poorly played AJ but i run goot and rivered a K to win the pot. (then i trash talked him a bit)
after that i had a top 5 stack and pretty much stole stole stole to keep myself alive. that worked for the most part until i had an opponent to my left start re-popping me all-in and i had to slow down.
i remember losing a big pot but then got it back when i re-raised a button stealer w/ AA and he called. (i was in the bb) the flop came down A94 and i checked knowing that he would probably shove a large portion of his hands, he did and i called and killed his A7o.
i tried to stay aggressive and steal blinds and before i knew it we were at the final table. the only notable was Jordan (imsolucky0) Morgan but he was two to my left so i didn't have to worry too much about him. i started the final table 9/9 but doubled up fairly quickly w/ AK vs jordans KT on a AK5 board. i had raised from ep and he called out of the blind and check raised me all-in.
i was now at 4/9 for all of 30 seconds. two hands later i was in the bb w/ AQo, a player i hadn't played w/ yet raised from middle to late position. i re-shipped it all and he snap called me with ............................................... A7s.
he wasted no time in flopping a 7 and i was back down to 9/9. we had a break right after that so i went and cleared my mind. often times a hand like that can give you an excuse just to ship it in with your short stack and tell everyone how unlucky you got. i didn't want this to happen and although i was shortest stack i still had 15bb's to work with which is a ton at this point in the tournament.
i blinded down to 100k at 4k/8k/1k when utg raised and i shoved w/ a beautiful KK. the sb tanked and ended up calling for 1/2 his stack and then utg called as well. i was pretty worried but the flop came Ten hi w/ 2 hearts and i had the K of hearts. the turn was a 3rd heart and the sb then moved in for the rest of his stack and utg folded. sb showed AKo no hearts and i faded to the 2 outer to more than triple up.
this put me 3/8 and i rolled from there. i was a complete card rack at the final table and slowly but surely we got down to 4 i was 2nd in chips. jordan then got bounced in 4th and i took the chip lead a few minutes into 3 way action. after a while i was back to 2nd in chips when i raised 55 on the button. the sb 3rd place stack shoved on me and i called him pretty quickly. i had folded to quite a few re-shoves at the final table and this player looked to be re-shoving on me light so i knew i had to take a stand at some point. plus, even if i doubled him up i still had some chips to play with.
he had A9o and i won the race. going into heads-up (against the same guy from the A7 hand) i was in a 1.2m to 800k disadvantage. after a few hands we had flipped spots and i had 1.2m but then lost a couple pots to the point that we were actually even. then the winning hand came up:
he limped the button and i checked the option w/ Qx9c.
the flop came Qc8c3c. i checked, he bet and i raised. he thought for a minute and called. the turn came an offusit 5 and i bet the pot, he raised all-in for a little bit more and i called instantly. for some reason i was extremely confident i had the best hand. not sure why but i went with it.
he had JxJc and i needed to fade the 8 clubs for the win. i did and that was it.
i had a whole bunch of friends over for a home game that turned into a real life rail of an online tournament which was pretty cool.
i ran deep in the 7pm $75 once again but failed to cash. i was at a table w/ andy mccleod on my left and the assinato on my right so it was pure hell. i made a really nice re-re-steal on andy at one point. he had been either cold calling or re-raising all of my lp raises so when i raised in the CO w/ KTo and he re-popped a small amount i 4 bet all-in and he folded. felt nice to put a move on a top player like that.
after all the success of the nite we finally got our home game started at 1am. we bumped the buy-in up to $40 since we only had time for one game. i played the heater out and was in every pot early. w/ 4 left (of a starting 6) i had 202 of the 300 chips in play but ended up finish ing 2nd after my open ended straight flush draw missed.
oh well, can't win'em all
tg.
btw..... bankroll now exceeds 19k :)
it was such a sick tournament. i played my absolute best game ever and got rewarded big time w/ my biggest score.
it was pretty cool how the day layed out. i started at noon and played the 12pm $26 which i can't even remember how it went.
i played a couple of satellites into other tournaments like the winners choice and i think maybe an ftops event. i busted in both of those.
i played the 2pm $26 DS which got 1127 players and i went deep in this one. i played really well in this tournament and with massive blinds just kinda got unlucky to run AQ into AK when an active player made yet another lp raise. i finished that tournament 43rd for a $76 payday which was a little short of the 6k i was eyeing for 1st.
@ 2:30 i decided to play a $26 satellite into the $109 60k guarantee. it received 67 players and the top 14 paid seats. w/ 19 left i was 19th and w/ blinds of 250/500/25a i only had about 2k in chips. i've never really studied satellite strategy but i basically played it like a money bubble in a sng. i only shoved from lp w/ ok hands into stacks that would be crippled if they called me and luckily i managed to squeak through and ended up building a stack to secure my seat. it was a pretty slow brutal bubble as tons of guys were stalling and what not.
i played the 15k $55 at 3:30 and it went piss poor the whole way through. for some reason you get 2k chips to start this tournament instead of the usual 1.5k or 3k. i was down to 800 chips early, doubled to 1600 and then slowly spewed my way down to 1.2k before getting it all-in against a bad player that outplayed me. he limped in ep which was always doing, the sb completed and i checked my option w/ KsQx in the bb. the flop came QsTs3x, sb checked, i led out, limper min-raised, i shoved and he had AA.
the 4pm $75 was a bit of a horror show as i busted just before the 1st break. i chipped up to 2k, went down to 1.2k after losing a pot to GB2005 who was on my left. i then doubled through a guy w/ AA when i min-raised his standard 8x the bb open. i lost some chips and was down to 1.7k when a shorter stacked shoved for 800 utg and isolated w/ JJ. he had Tc8c and hit a flush on me to put me in trouble. the ending came when i shoved over an mp opener w/ 99 and i believe he had TT and i didn't suckout.
those tournaments brought me all the way up to 5:55 so i took a 5 min break before starting the 6pm $109 that i had satted into and the $26. im not very good at playing long stretches so im used to having a couple hour break on saturdays between my afternoon and evening sessions.
i have no idea what happened in the $26 6pm but opr tells me i busted 205th out of 635 players.
the $109 is a pretty big blur right now. im hoping to upload the hh to the pokerxfactor replayer so i'll just go over the main highlights of the tournament.
i started off good and worked my chips up to 4k before losing some pots and going down to around 2.4k. late in the 2nd hour i doubled a few times and started to get a reasonable stack together. i some how got a big stack and then took a pretty bad beat.
ep raised 3x, i re-raised from mp 3x his raise, it folded back to him and he shoved for a little bit more than my re-raise. i was in good shape w/ QQ vs KJ but he flopped a King and proceeded to tell me that KJ is his favorite hand and it never loses for him. sigh.
i rebuilt up again and actually remember making a few shoves so i must have been in the 10-15bb area. after shoving twice in previous orbits a big hand came up. mp raised and was cold called by another mp player. i shoved JJ from the sb since i would be committing a lot of chips with a re-raise and i would have to play the hand out of position. so i shoved and the initial raiser folded and the cold caller went into time bank. while he was thinking another player that wasn't even a part of the hand started telling this guy to call me. i went nuts and reported the idiot.
cold caller ended up calling w/ AQo and flopped a Q but i also flopped a J and took down a big pot. just as i finished reporting the idiot i got into a big pot with him.
he min-raised utg and i picked up AK on the button. i re-raised committing most of his stack and he thought for a while before just calling. the flop came down AJT and he opened shoved and i called. he had a poorly played AJ but i run goot and rivered a K to win the pot. (then i trash talked him a bit)
after that i had a top 5 stack and pretty much stole stole stole to keep myself alive. that worked for the most part until i had an opponent to my left start re-popping me all-in and i had to slow down.
i remember losing a big pot but then got it back when i re-raised a button stealer w/ AA and he called. (i was in the bb) the flop came down A94 and i checked knowing that he would probably shove a large portion of his hands, he did and i called and killed his A7o.
i tried to stay aggressive and steal blinds and before i knew it we were at the final table. the only notable was Jordan (imsolucky0) Morgan but he was two to my left so i didn't have to worry too much about him. i started the final table 9/9 but doubled up fairly quickly w/ AK vs jordans KT on a AK5 board. i had raised from ep and he called out of the blind and check raised me all-in.
i was now at 4/9 for all of 30 seconds. two hands later i was in the bb w/ AQo, a player i hadn't played w/ yet raised from middle to late position. i re-shipped it all and he snap called me with ............................................... A7s.
he wasted no time in flopping a 7 and i was back down to 9/9. we had a break right after that so i went and cleared my mind. often times a hand like that can give you an excuse just to ship it in with your short stack and tell everyone how unlucky you got. i didn't want this to happen and although i was shortest stack i still had 15bb's to work with which is a ton at this point in the tournament.
i blinded down to 100k at 4k/8k/1k when utg raised and i shoved w/ a beautiful KK. the sb tanked and ended up calling for 1/2 his stack and then utg called as well. i was pretty worried but the flop came Ten hi w/ 2 hearts and i had the K of hearts. the turn was a 3rd heart and the sb then moved in for the rest of his stack and utg folded. sb showed AKo no hearts and i faded to the 2 outer to more than triple up.
this put me 3/8 and i rolled from there. i was a complete card rack at the final table and slowly but surely we got down to 4 i was 2nd in chips. jordan then got bounced in 4th and i took the chip lead a few minutes into 3 way action. after a while i was back to 2nd in chips when i raised 55 on the button. the sb 3rd place stack shoved on me and i called him pretty quickly. i had folded to quite a few re-shoves at the final table and this player looked to be re-shoving on me light so i knew i had to take a stand at some point. plus, even if i doubled him up i still had some chips to play with.
he had A9o and i won the race. going into heads-up (against the same guy from the A7 hand) i was in a 1.2m to 800k disadvantage. after a few hands we had flipped spots and i had 1.2m but then lost a couple pots to the point that we were actually even. then the winning hand came up:
he limped the button and i checked the option w/ Qx9c.
the flop came Qc8c3c. i checked, he bet and i raised. he thought for a minute and called. the turn came an offusit 5 and i bet the pot, he raised all-in for a little bit more and i called instantly. for some reason i was extremely confident i had the best hand. not sure why but i went with it.
he had JxJc and i needed to fade the 8 clubs for the win. i did and that was it.
i had a whole bunch of friends over for a home game that turned into a real life rail of an online tournament which was pretty cool.
i ran deep in the 7pm $75 once again but failed to cash. i was at a table w/ andy mccleod on my left and the assinato on my right so it was pure hell. i made a really nice re-re-steal on andy at one point. he had been either cold calling or re-raising all of my lp raises so when i raised in the CO w/ KTo and he re-popped a small amount i 4 bet all-in and he folded. felt nice to put a move on a top player like that.
after all the success of the nite we finally got our home game started at 1am. we bumped the buy-in up to $40 since we only had time for one game. i played the heater out and was in every pot early. w/ 4 left (of a starting 6) i had 202 of the 300 chips in play but ended up finish ing 2nd after my open ended straight flush draw missed.
oh well, can't win'em all
tg.
btw..... bankroll now exceeds 19k :)
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