"Don't play the cards, baby, play the player": Scotty Nguyen
Now that I've set the tone, I offer an apology for few and far between blogs. Life appears back to normal, and I can ruminate and masticate on the ups and down of my secret second life and alter ago PokerMonster more often again.
This one is entitled Three Final Tables to discuss three recent scenarios, two from online play, one from yesterday's live game. Each has a crucially different dynamic: the first, from a $6 online bounty game where I came to the final table the chip leader with cheap blinds, the second
from a tight $100+9 online game where only the final table pays out and the bubble lasted until the blinds were 400/800 with me holding average chip stack of 20,000, and yesterdays live $50+10 where the bubble burst at 1000/2000 blinds, similar average, but yours truly was again the big stack. In order we have big stack low pressure, small stack high pressure, and big stack high pressure, all creating different needs and dynamics.
Lets talk a little bit about the road to the chip lead at the final last night, a lesson in patience, luck, and making huge and correct preflop decisions.
Yesterday was a special event. Dub's birthday present was a freeroll into his first live $50+10. The guy has never paid more than $10.00 and only plays poker online except for the home game. By luck of the draw, I, Dub, and Bri, another live MTT virgin from the home game, whom we affectionately call Go Big or Go Home Bri, are all at the same starting table. Al found his way on another table, and Mag, our fifth who has played this MTT once, at a third.
Dub's game style is tight and patient. Bri is, when on, a loose-aggressive tactician. Both are a bit intimidated by the process, and are making mistakes. Dub is not prepared to steal a pot without a hand. Bri is making bets post flop, but small ones, too small to get respect. It's as if they are playing not to lose, not to be the first of the group out, but I am playing to chip up in PokerMonster style (Al will be in fact the first out when he flops two pair and pays off a set).
Dub still thinks Phil Gordon offers good advice, but Dub's tight image will equal one small pot taken down when his AK hits a AA6 board and he gets no takers.
.
PokerMonster is taking PokerMonster's advice and is playing scary. I am unpredictable.
In early position with 66, I limp in for 50 chips. A young player in position raises to 300 and I show him the 66 and tell him his 77 is good. One rotation of blinds later, I now have 44 in early position and limp in. Same player raises to 200, and I make the call. We check check on a 3 9 10 board, and then I check the 3 turn, let him bet 375, and check-raise him to 1200. I show my 44 after he folds.
Hands like that intimidate the hell out of players.
A loose aggressive player (a young, tall guy with a touque on: aka TT) has been up and down, he is currently up, and with blinds of 50/100 he minraises to 200. I see AQ in the BB and raise to 700 and he makes the call. The flop is 3 8 9 and I check. He bets 500 and I call. I think he has nothing anyway, but a Q hits the board on the turn and I push my 2500 or so chips all in and he has to fold.
I have successfully established table image by being able to outplay and outmanage out of position. Scary Image. TT will generally stay out of my way from now on. Others will learn from my management of TT.
TT has an interesting strategy which works well from him. Once the blinds get a little pricier, and the table rarely affords a cheap flop, on two occasions in early position he will limp in with KK and successfully trap a raiser and take his chips.
The result is that few people want to raise TT's limp ins for fear of a trap. This enables TT to see cheap flops with more hands, and he will catch big flops with garbage hands like Q8 and keep chipping up. This is his way of managing the table. More on him later.
At the first break I am chipped up to 5125, or doubled up (through grinding out pots, my preferred method over one big pot) while Al is out, dub has 1600, Bri 850, and Mag 850 (a bad beat hurt Mag I am told). Because its Dub's birthday, I will double him up early after the break after my limped in sooted A7 catches a flush draw, and he check raises me all in after betting 600 on the flop. Dub is a check raising bastard, and he will always have top pair when he makes this move, but I was 40% to suck out, it was his birthday, and I can afford it.
The consequence of my birthday gift was to put me in a tighter position and see very ew flops as I watch the table work. At this time I am exposed to the game of a player to TT's left, a 30-something guy with baseball cap, glasses, and bad goatee, aka Beard Bad, who had limped in UTG, and played a hand with TT's limp in. The flop had been A 5 3 and both checked. the turn was a 4 and Beard Bad min-check raised TT from 500 to 1000 for a call, with 3 diamonds on board. With a 4th diamond, they both slow down, and Beard Bad's 5-3 off suit falls to TT's set of 4s, no diamonds either.
5 -3 off suit limps in UTG? That is a player with no standards whatsoever. More on Beard Bad later. Fun to come.
I will, eventually, and just before the next break, manage to steal my way into reasonable shape, ultimately pushing 77 all in from the SB against a limp in. I got a feel she had a good starting hand that needed a flop, and therefore I could steal, and she might call for a coin flip. She called QK and didn't catch up, putting my at 9100 at the break, about to pay the BB of 600. Dub would make steal attempts too, end wind up getting a loose call against his 10J sooted-second worst hand in poker-and busting out. Dub usually knows when to pick his all-in spots, but he is very literally a fish out of water in this game.
TT has at this point chipped up to at least 25,000 chips, and he enjoyed the slower pace of 150/300/25 and 200/400/50 levels before the break. TT would fail to make the more aggressive adjustment. He would continue to limp in, and face frequent and significant pre-flop raises. He seemed to have no concept of folding to these raises. He would routinely make obvious feeler bets like 1000 into pots of 6000 or so after the flop and get raised big and have to fold. He would refuse to change his game, and he never presented the tells of strength that intimidated others. He was simply outplayed hand after hand and soon he was slowed to a crawl with a fraction of the stack he had built. When the table broke up I would not see him again.
My time after the 2nd break was miserable. No cards. Fold fold fold. With 30 to go and 9100 chips, I wanted to make some hands but it didn't happen. The table breaks up just after I paid the BB and had 3400 chips left with blinds of 400/800/100 ante and my new table position gave me only 4 hands until I paid the blinds again with the price going up.
Playing like Al gave me an Al like stack, but I don't wasn't about to pay off another 1800 chips through the blinds and have a 1600 chip stack. I employ a variant on my old ploy, the blind all in. I simply pretended to look at my hands and pushed the chips in.
Again, the glory of the blind all in is you can't give off any tells if you don't know what you have.
I happened to have 83 off-suit, and happened to get double-lucky: AK protected his hand with a 12000 chip all in and I caught my 8 to pull up to 8000 chips. Woo Hoo!
hand 1
In the BB, my crazy-go-nuts play and still short stack leads to everyone folding to the sb, who simply calls. I have the same hand, 83. I check for a flop. the SB puts 3000 out quickly, but I get a sense this was his intended move all along. I go all in with a 3 7 9 flop and he can't call. I show the 3 and he confirms my pair was good. I now have over 12,000 chips.
hand 2
After folding the SB, Beard Bad comes in early with a raise to 2500, and everyone folds to the man to my right, who goes immediately all in. I look down at my cards. AQ clubs. I immediately want a chip count on the original raiser, and in asking, I discover its Beard Bad! "Oh,, its you!" I declare with delight, and the chip count process confirms to me Beard Bad is weak as a kitten. When I call, the man to my right says good call, but I know it was a good call. he had put Beard Bad on a typical hand for Beard Bad, and he was better.
Now, the SB, a very short stack with only 1000 chips left to put in, makes an instant call, and I would too with the prospect of 6x his terrible stack being offered up and only two expected hands to beat.
Inexplicably, Beard Bad calls, and heres what we have, in order of who acted first:
- Beard Bad has J 8 clubs (?!?!?!?!?)
- Man to my right, AJ hearts (!!!!!!!!!!!)
- PokerMonster has AQ clubs (WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO)
- SB has K6 off suit (the only truly live cards in the bunch).
The flop is 8 4 9 (oh no!)(I'm not panicking)
The turn is a K (SB has made top pair, and the A is unlikely to hit, but I don't care about SB. I;m still not panicking...?)
The river is a gorgeous Noble Lady, the Q of Diamonds.
It will take them about 5 minutes between the dealer and the pit boss to sort out the pots. No one was knocked out, but I raked in the massive 32000 side pot.
hand 4
I'm not done. My recollection is foggy, but it might be 2 hands later when beard Bad, UTG, pushes his last 3000 into the pot. Play folds to me and with AK diamonds, say to Beard Bad, VERY casually, "I owe you a call", and push a stack of 10 1000 chip yellows into the pot.
And then something very interesting happens.
The BB goes all in.
The BB has a LOT of chips.
I have a fair amount to think about. I ask for a count, and his chips move forward and the dealer starts counting. I start talking about that I have a strong hand, not sure I can lay this down, etc etc, and I get a signal. Our all-in big stack looks concerned. I'm on a rush. I have a big hand. I make a huge call.
The BB has AQ.
Beard Bad has Q 8.
I had mislead the BB with my casual comment suggesting a loose call, and PokerMonster is a HUGE favorite. I don't care about Beard Bad's live 8. The odds calculator puts AQ at 12.8% to win the pot, and thats a 55,000 chip pot between us. The board hits all small cards, no 8, and I rake it all, knocking both players to the rail.
Hand 6
In 6 hands, I went from 3100 to 64000 chips, and 2 to 1 chip lead on any player at any table.
I have also managed to make mincemeat of the survivors of my massive rush. I will cruise gently and manage my stack while they grind precariously, step by step, to the bubble as blinds rise to 1000/2000. I will eventually burst the bubble when a 7000 raise leads to a 17000 all in reraise and I wake up in the BB with AA and push all in, pushing the raiser out with his 77 and knocking the all in QQ out for a stack of 90000 chips, and a 3-1 lead to open the final table.
So what if I didn't win hand at the final table and crashed and burned in 5th? From worst to first in 6 hands? The final table's a freeroll, baby.
We'll talk about that final table and the others later. Maybe after tomorrow's game.
The Lady of Luck loves ya, baby!
