Get It Quietly

Football, bollocks and a bit of poker if you're lucky.

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Location: Enfield, London, United Kingdom

Sunday, July 08, 2007

Shootout Day 2 (Part 1)

We came back 6-handed on day 2 to finish the second round. As I said before, the structure was kind of odd in that the second round was much slower than the first, for no apparent reason. Our second round table took 4 hours to finish, and there were still a couple more in play when we did. If we had played through on the previous night it wouldn't have finished till 7 am, so clearly the decision to break was correct.

Anyway, having not written this up at the time, the final is still quite fresh in my mind but the conclusion of round 2 is all a bit of a blur. I do have the impression that this session was the best I played in the tournament. So, Bill Chen ran into Aces twice and was unable to recover. The weaker European player (who I realised was probably German, whatever) finally dribbled them away. I lost a pot to Noah Boeken where I correctly interpreted his flop 3-bet as an attempt to buy a free turn on a draw. He was clearly surprised when I bet the turn, but called (correctly obv) and rivered his straight. That knocked me down to 50K. However I turned a set in a big pot against Noah to recover. Noah saved a bet by folding the river on that hand, but he also folded the river for one bet in two or three other pots and I can't help wondering whether he was right every time. Folding the river in limit is a very dangerous game. Not only can you lose the pot you're playing, you can also encourage people to take future pots away from you. I basically don't do it unless I have completely missed a draw, I'd rather just drop the bet. I know, I'm a calling station :-)

Knowing that Noah was capable of putting a hand down, I was able to make a move on him when he was quite short-stacked. I raised on the button with T8s and he three-bet from the small blind. The flop came AK6, he bet and I thought I'd take a shot at it and raise. He slammed the table and folded after a little thought. This hand made the Pokerpages coverage, they speculated Queens (just like the hand I played in the mixed limit event) but who knows. I found Aces and tried to trap Noah for the rest of his stack, but he was good enough to save a full bet. Finally the Scandi also found Aces against him and finished him off.

Three-handed, the American and I put in five bets pre-flop (I had Kings). The flop came KQ8, he check-called me all the way with Aces. Maybe this is standard at a certain level, I mean I am very likely to have made a set with that pre-flop action, but it was still great play by him to lose the minimum there IMO. That gave me good momentum and the deck started to help me out as well. I had the American all in with AKhh against TT on a rag turn with 2 hearts, but missed it. Even so the Scandi dropped out in third soon after and I had a 200-70 chip lead on the break. Now the limits finally started to bite hard and basically one showdown hand would either finish it off or bring us level. Fortunately we pretty much committed on a flop of QT9, I had JT, and when the 8 came on the turn he made a resigned call for his last bet with KQ. Final !

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