Please feel free to ask any questions etc etc:
9 of us decided to take the jaunt up from Leicester to take part in the IPO including my close friends Neil Blatchly (Blatch) and Kev Smith (AutobetKev). We arrive Thursday evening and have an interesting start of the trip flipping for Euro"s in the airport departure lounge. Somehow I end up about 50 Euro up flipping against Blatch. MBN. We were joined by blondeites Evil pie, Boshi and Cos. The latter ended up on the 300 euro down in flips. gg Cos.
We have a quiet night out in town. A meal and a few drinks and a boogie at a club before getting back to our hotel and respective rooms. I"m sharing with Kev and instantly regret this decision when he"s snoring all night. I can"t sleep. FML FML FML.
I boot up the lap top and fire up tilt and stars to play a 45 man sit and go. F that- Tilt has a 110$ super turbo MTT starting in 4 mins. 6 max. 300 starting chips. 5 min clock. Standard tilt structure= heaven!!! I register thinking I"ll last around 6 mins and end up taking it down (well chopping it heads up). For those of you who know me from Fb and here, I have been fairly vocal (a whinging *******) about how bad I"ve been running probably from the start of this year to the end of August. It"s been the sickest run of my short poker career and has really left feeling low, lacking confidence and mardy as **** (look up mardy in a Leicester dictionary as well as cob) Fast forward 2 months and I can"t lose. I"m winning every flip- and my confidence is back. I go to bed at 7.30am- up in 3 hours for the IPO. Great!!!
For some reason Blatch wanted to get to the venue early even tho I told him a gazillion times it would not get started at the 12 o clock start time. This is not a slight on the organisers. I"m sure even a place like DTD would struggle to get 720 players seated in two different rooms with staggered chips counts to start on time. So we hang around for an age and finally get started at about half 12. I"m wasn"t really sure what to expect from the field having only played in Ireland twice before- both significantly higher buys in- the Irish EPT and the Irish Open (shameless brag- no Irish flag tho )
The table was very soft- most playing fairly bad/tight. There were a couple of decent players that you are always able to identify. My plan was to be very selectivley aggressive, try and keep pots small and open pots with a wide range. I played plenty of pots and quickly established a loose image (surprise surprise).
So onto some actual hands......
OK so first hand of any significance wasn"t huge but a defining one because I stuck to my read. When running bad, you tend to think everyone is holding the nuts. You look at a
flop and think your opponent must have
when you"re holding
Blinds were 25/50 and we"re playing 10 handed. Stacks are between 8-10k and I"m in the hijack. Two limpers immediately before me and I look down at 78os. I limp behind and it folds to the small blind who decides to try and
isolate pot build with a raise to 225. Everyone calls so I come along with position and more importantly "value bud"
The flop comes down 10, 7, 3 rainbow. There"s 5 players in the pot, sb, bb and us limpers so there"s 1125 in the pot. Pre flop raiser leads for 550. Folds to me and I flat with middle pair. Turn brings a 5 and he now bets 850. I"m fairly sure I"m winning but there"s not too much margin for error. I don"t wanna lose a decent proportion of my stack at this stage but he doesn"t look comfortable so I call once more. Blank on the river and it goes check check. Matey has AQss and I scoop not without a comment or two from said matey. I advise him not to try and bluff a station- all friendly banter.
I continue to stay involved- opening with frequency. Mixing up my play= sometimes limping behind, sometimes raising multiple limpers. Everyone"s quite passive pre. Then comes my first significant double up....
Matey opens for 350 utg at 50/100 and it folds to me in the sb. I have Td
. Heaven. I flat, big blind calls and we see a Th
flop. He leads for 550 and I repop to 1400. Matey decides to 4 bet to 7700 (cos I obv have a draw) and when I shove he tanks for his last 2k or so and eventually decides QQ is too big to pass. I hold and am up to 22k at 50/100
Ok so I"ve doubled and start to
spew splash around in pots as you do when you have chips. No one at the table is causing me concern and I get my stack up to 25k without too much trouble. For the next couple of levels it yoyos between 25-30k.
My table sadly breaks and I get to another table which I quickly realise is even more nittier then the last one. I"m playing my fair share of pots and two significant pots against the same player spring to mind.
The first he raises the cut off to 1600 at 300/600/50 and I flat with Tc
The flop is
and he checks to me. I decide to bet with outs here so make it 1850 to play. He tank/calls.
The turn is a
. Bink. He checks again and go ahead and bet my straight for value. I make it 4900 to play and he calls quite quickly. The river is a blank and he checks again. I"m sure he has some sort of pair. Maybe even the King. I also feel like his quick call on the turn was out of stubborness and I"m pretty sure I can extract max value from him so I bet near full pot and he snap calls me. He flips QQ (maybe he thought he was heroing) and I prove once more then suited connectors pwn QQ. I stack the guy later when he raises with K9, I peel with Ts
and I snap his over shove on the KQJ board.
I"m sailing on 60k and really starting to enjoy the tourney. I have no major setbacks and continue to play hands confidently and soon find myself on around 80k. I usually have roller coaster rides in tourney but this has been plain sailing. I get moved twice in quick succession and then get moved to a table with some huge stacks including the chip leader of the tourney at the time (I"d guess) who"s sat on around 200k. And so the roller coaster began.....
OK so I take a seat at table deepstack with about 90k. I am on top of the world and start raising pots straight away. In hindsight I should have established an image and watched how people were playing cos there table was very spewy (more so than me) and people were not going to be "pushed around"
I slide down to about 80k when the following hand occurs. Blinds are 800/1600 and utg opens for 6k (spewwww) out of a stack of around 25k. I look down at 99 and peel from the hijack. Now I think it"s better to re raise to iso however I made a mistake in counting his stack. The blue 500 chips were very similar to the navy blue 5k chips. Matey had a ton of the 500 chips which I mistook for 5k chips (some of them).
Sb looks down and insta shoves for 46k. Hello Mr AK. UTG ponders for a couple of seconds and puts his 25k stack in. Now what to do??? I think online and without reads this is a clear fold but I"m sat there pretty sure they both have AK. I know Mr 36k has AK without a doubt so I only have to beat him to about breakeven on the hand! So what do I do? I go against my instinct and fold. Both flip up AK and the 10 high board doesn"t help things. I"m pretty annoyed and this is a part of my game that has got so much better in the last 12 months but suddenly I start to tilt.... Pretty stupid really. I mean I still have a more than healthy stack but keep thinking about being on 150k. I can"t let it go. I should have those chips. I know. I"m going to get them. I"ll re raise loads and win them back.
So starts the inevitable spew. It"s so stupid. I know I"m gonna spew yet I can"t do anything about it. I"m hitting self destruct. I should step away and take a break. The blinds and antes will be must cheaper then what I"m about to do.
I raise with 22 and call an all in. My Opponent has 10 10 and another 10 on the flop seals my fate. I"m now on 50k. But worst is yet to come. The button- a cocky Irishman (shock horror) who was an abso spew bot raises the button to 6700 at 1k/2k. I look down at J4 and three bet to 16500. Great move if I have it but against this guy truly ridic. He wouldn"t fold QJ in this spot and quickly calls (with 25k behind. WP sir)
The flop comes down AJ2. I tank for 20 seconds and check. My opponent checks behind. I then lead for 17k and he insta chips when another ace hits the turn. It"s 7k for me to call and I fold. The worst thing happens and the tilt starts to wear off. I feel like abs ****. Why didn"t I just take a frickin break?!? Why did I fold the 99??? kihafihpowshfojsdo
So I regroup and start to grind. I eventually reship my 27k stack with 77 and manage to hold after a guy tank calls with A8. I win a race! Hoozah! Back up to 60k. Blinds are now 1500/3000 and a 35k stack opens for 9k and somehow folds when I reship with tens. A few hands later and I"m suddenly back to 90k. I"m now more chatty and in love with poker again. Go figure. I witness one huge ridic pot when two oppenets gets the 100k stacks in pre with AJ and AK (Aj opened to 8k, AK reshipped for 200k, AJ tank/calls)
Mr AK opens the button to 10k and I call with 44 in the small blind. The flop is a sexy A46. I check. He c-bets for 10k, I make it 24 and he insta ships the lot. I snap/high five/fish pump/hand in the air call and his AJ loses. I"m on 180k. Weeeeeeeeeee. Table breaks and off I go to Table "Chufty" FML............
So where were we? K. I"m moved to another table abs buzzing once again. I move once more to- guess what? A table full of nits! Although there"s one gent sitting on an impressive stack, Sunderland shirt wrapped around is shoulders, cap dothed. Who is it? It"s only Richard mfkin Ashby. FML he"s two to my left too!!!!
Now I don"t know if you know this. It"s one of the best kept secrets in poker but wtf.... I"ll let the cat out of the bag. 99.9% of poker players think they"re far better than they actually are. And when they sit down with some truly great players rather than readjust their game and adapt to new surroundings, they think "huh- it"s Richard Ashby. He"s only human. I"m gonna cold 5 bet him with 10 4 off suit. He"s ****!" Not me tho! I respect players who are the top of their game and just watching Richard play was educational.
So anyway, I"m in the hijack with 10, 4 off suit and make it 7600 at blinds 1500/3000. As soon as Chufty reaches for chips I decide that I may have to readjust my late psitin raising range from any 2 to any 2 that add up to 16 or above. Chufy doesn"t 3 bet however, he does smething far more scary. He peels. And he was doing this against me a lot! Not only that, he was peeling most flops against me too. I decide that rather than try and play OOP against the best player prbably left in the field (James Dempsey ftw obv. PS: need staking for the GUKPT grand finak, k thx) I"ll start opening tighter and re raising the weaker players lighter. This plan works as Chufty obv readjusts to my readjustment and starts folding. Basically, he knows that I know that he"s calling me a lot so he als knows that I will tighten up therefore his peeling range will tighten cos he knows I"ll be winning on a lot of flops. What he doesn"t know is that I know he knows that I"m raising ltighter therefore I re-readjust my opening range and snigger a little when I open 92 in late position in everyone folds. ! Take that Chufty!
One significant pot I play against Chufty. He limps utg. I make in the sb and the bb checks. I have J10 and the flop comes Q93. I decide to lead for 6600 and Chufty calls. No need to wait as the turn comes an 8. I decide to lead right ut again for 12800 and Chufty calls. The on the river puts a flush and a four card straight out there. What a great card to bet! My range is so polarised if I lead he"s bound to pay me off light! How much to bet? Hmmmmm- wait a min. This is Chufty. He could have back doored hearts. I should check call here. Keep the pot small. I mean he can break me. He"s a great player. CHECK! Chufty Checks. Yu fkin idiot George!!! WTF are you doing??? I take down the pot but am not pleased with my ***** poker. There"ll be no more of that later.
I nick a few small pots of the nits and when 4 hands left are announced me and Chufty collude obv as the big stacks and take 2 a piece. I finish the day as Chip daddy, 273k and head back to the hotel with the boys. 3 of us have made it unfortunately Blatch fell early after Simon trumper out played him in back t back pots and Kev got unlucky when he open shipped 40k at 400/800 and got called by A10. We chill out the hotel bar for a bit and a few laughs are had..... I mention the Irish flag I"m about to ship and go to bed saying I"m going t play the 5am and take it down back to back. That sure happened! I fall asleep about 3am dreaming of the final table.....
