1/13 14:30
just finished checking in/unpacking/etc.
Melbourne is beautiful. hotel is banging, but internet is charged by the minute
mental prep for ownage tomorrow.
need foood.
1/13 21:00
met the rest of the team. really awesome bunch. liam runs good at roulette.
1/16 01:00
Long, long day. Over 11 hours of poker. End Day 1 with 2X average stack.
Level 1 50/100
I
get KK in the first hand. MP raises to 250, 3 players call. I raise.
Either I take down the pot right there, or on the flop with a cbet.
A
few hands later, I have JJ in the CO. MP raises. I call. (Big?) blind
calls as well. I flop top set on a board of [J52], two clubs. 3 checks.
Turn comes [7], adding a heart for another two hearts. MP makes a
smallish bet. I make a 3x or so raise and the blind reraises me a
somewhat small amount. I smelled a lower set, so I decided to push all
in, despite being a huge overbet. I was afraid of the huge number of
scare cards that could come on the river that would kill my action.
Also, I was hoping on having made somewhat of a loose/crazy image from
my action on the first hand. The blind thinks for a long while and
folds. He indicates to me that he had 22 (bottom set).
Played TAG.
End of first break: 29k
Level 2 100/200
Folds
to me with TT in late position. I raise it up to 3x BB. BB, who seems
loose, calls. Flop comes [KXX] (one overcard, two undercards with
possible straight draws). He checks. I bet like 1/2-2/3 pot. He calls.
[J] turn. He checks. Again, I fire about 2/3 pot to either take the pot
down there or prevent a river bet and hopefully see a cheap showdown.
He calls. River comes some trivial card. He checks. I check. I take it
down. My first showdown.
Call in UTG+2 with 75s. Folds around to
BB who checks. Flop comes [K8X] all spades. BB checks, I bet $300. He
calls. Turn comes [2] club. He checks. I bet out $1k, he reraises me to
$3k. I call. River comes a non-spade 8 and pairs the board. He bets
$5k, I make a pretty easy call. As he shows his K2, he says "you
probably got me on the river." Then I flip over my flush and the table
laughs.
Still playing pretty TAG.
End of second break: 40k
Level 3 100/200 25ante
Middle
to late position makes a standard preflop raise to 600 or 700. I call.
Tight SB makes reraises to $3k (a significant portion of his ~12k
stack). Original raiser folds. I put $3k more on the table and say,
"call." However, dealer informs me that I'm forced to reraise because I
put too much on the table (I put $3k on top, instead of $3k total) and
also because I said "call" (a split second) after I put the chips in.
SB 5-bets all-in. By this point, I'm pretty committed with my AK, so I
call. Villain flips over QQ, and his queens win the race.
Folds
to me. I raise in late position with A5o. BB calls. Flop comes [Q88]. 2
checks. Turn comes [2]. I bet like 1/2-2/3 pot. River is a trivial
small card. We both check. I take it down with Ace-high. My third
showdown at the table.
Folds to me. I raise in MP to $600 with
99. Tight player directly to my left calls, as does BB. Flop comes
[36cQc], two clubs. BB checks. I cbet like 2/3 pot. Tightie calls, BB
folds. By now I have a pretty good read that Tightie has a pair, jacks
or below (maybe even a set?). Turn comes a [9]. I check. He bets $2500.
I reraise to $6k. He calls. River comes [4]. I bet $10k. He calls. I
flip over my set of nines, he flips of a set of sixes. He is not happy.
Playing pretty TAG but mixing it up now and making more steals.
End of third break: 45k
Level 4 150/300 25ante
Pretty card dead; made a few steals and bluffs. A few got caught. Nothing too interesting.
End of fourth break: 42k
Level 5 200/400 50ante
Took
a pretty huge bad beat. I raise $1200 with A8 in UTG+2. Folds to BB,
who calls. Flop comes [A6X], two spades. He checks. I think for a
while, and then check. Turn comes a meaningless brick. I bet $2k, he
reraises me all-in with a stack of about $11k. I go into the tank and
call. He flips over K6. River comes a miracle [K], I get 5-outered and
double up shortie.
Playing a bit more LAG than before, nothing crazy though.
End of fifth break: 35k
Level 6 300/600 75ante
Turned up the aggression against the other players in the table.
Very
good LP makes it $1700. I call in the CO with 66. BB, a maniac LAG with
a huge number of chips, calls as well. Flop comes [236]. LP raiser bets
$3k, I reraise to $8k. BB calls, original raiser folds. Turn comes [4].
He checks. I go into the tank and bet out $10k. He reraises me all-in.
I cringe and call, hoping he has a lower set or maybe even two pair. I
flip over sixes, he flips over deuces. My sixes hold up, and I double
through in a monster pot.
Folds to me. I raise to $1800 with JJ
in MP. Tightie to my left calls. Flop comes [J2X]. I bet a measly $1k.
He calls. Turn comes something like [8]. I bet $4k. He goes into the
tank and folds.
End of day 1: 85.5k
Thoughts on Day 1:
Pretty
good run of cards, except for that bad beat I mentioned earlier. Not to
brag, but in all honesty I think I played great. With a few exceptions,
I think I made all the right moves in almost every situation. I think
however, I was too aggressive in the two hands that I had top set of
Jacks (refer to above). In the first hand, I would have taken more in
the pot by just calling the turn and betting the river. Even if the
3-flush comes, he still may well have called my value bet. I may even
stack him if he fills up and there is a 3-flush board. In the second
hand, I think I correctly read his range as middle pair or AK/AQ, so I
have no idea why I chose to bet the turn. I blame fatigue.
Note: I don't think I played a perfect
game. There were a few instances where I missed value because of my bet
sizes and betting patterns. I don't think I ever managed to put myself
in a -EV situation, though. Come to think of it, I think I won every
showdown except that bad beat where K6 rivered me.
Going to sleep now, got to get ready for another 11 hours of poker tomorrow. Kill me now.
1/15 20:50
lots
of big names gone in Day 1a so far: Gus Hansen, Patrick Antonius, Chris
Ferguson, Phil Laak, Jennifer Harmon, Lee Watkinson, Paul Wasicka...off
the top of my head. Ivey has the dominant chip lead right now,
which scares me. also, Joe Hachem is right behind him in chip count.
going to rest up early for the tournament tomorrow. still thinking of a gimmick I can use.
1/16 11:30
Not feeling very well rested.
My Day 2 table and chip counts. I hate being on the ends.
Sam Khouiss 26 1 41100
Richard Holmes 26 2 28300
Mary Vella 26 3 17000
Jonathan Turner 26 4 66300
Dusan Stoevski 26 5 113000
Sergey Ershov 26 6 41400
John Tabatabai 26 7 88400
Joshua Weiss 26 8 10800
Michael Wang 26 9 85500
Doing
some homework with Google on who these people are. I have PearlJammer
at my table (fuckk) and the runner-up finisher to WSOP Europe ME. And
both have a large stack. ...gl me
1/17 10:30
The dream ends. Busted out about 120th/780. 80 cash. Almost made it to the last level of Day 2.
Been
up and down all of Day 2 from a low of $45k to a high of $120k. Been
trying to play TAG, but played LAG/made steals for a while because I
was absolutely card dead for two levels. Too many hands to report,
can't remember most of them by now. But here's the hand that busted me:
Blinds
$1k/$2k, $300ante. MP raises to $7k and gets a cold call from a tight
guy to his direct left. I know MP doesn't have much, so I decide to try
a squeeze. I reraise in the CO to $20k. MP instafolds but cold caller
calls my reraise after some thought. Flop comes [379]. He checks. I'm a
bit baffled by this point as to what he could hold based on his line
thus far. I decide to check behind to represent a monster hand, as he
had seen me slowplay a set in position in an earlier hand. Turn comes
[K]. He checks again. I decide that he has a pair TT-JJ. His cold call
and call of my reraise preflop, as well as his check on the flop and
turn would make sense if he wasn't sure I had QQ-AA. I bet $25k. He thinks for about a minute and calls. River comes [J]. He checks a third time. With over $100k in the pot, I push in
my remaining stack, about $40k. He goes into the tank and thinks for
about 5 minutes while I have a heart attack. He calls. I flip over my
A6 bluff, he flips over AK, which for some reason surprised the hell
out of me. I expected any strong king to shove preflop. After all, my preflop reraise was like 25% of this stack, but I guess I could have expected it knowing how tight he was.
I may have been able to make it to Day 3 and maybe even a cash by playing premium hands
for the remaining time (to make the money but with a crippled stack).
My chip stack was like $85k and average was about $115k--not tiny, but
I needed a large stack if I stood a solid chance of taking down the
tournament. That meant making moves, putting players to a decision for
all their chips. I was playing for the win, baby! In the end, it was a
bad read and wrong timing. What a bummer.
I've replayed that
hand like a thousand times since last night. Should've bet the damn
flop. Sucks how one hand can be your undoing after 20 hours of good
decisions.
Overall, though, I'm happy with my play. Just being
able to play in the Aussie Millions is a huuge opportunity. Met some
really great people with Poker.com. Saw a ton of poker celebs face to
face (haven't seen Dan Negreanu or Antonio Esfandiari but I think
that's pretty much it), and I even got to play with a couple of them.
In other news, I'm famous!
http://www.carbonpoker.com/blog/
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1/18 17:50
WHAT. A. FUCKING. NIGHT.
Thanks to liam, foxy, mark, todd, and barty for showing me the best goddamn night of my life