Continued from Part Two...
One of the rarely mentioned ways in which you can ‘run badly’ in a poker tournament is your table draw. So far in this event, I felt I had been fairly lucky. Sure, I had been out of position on Nguyen, Hachem and Demidov, but on all three occasions I was comfortable with the rest of my table.
My comfort level decreased significantly when I logged on to PokerNews on Day 3 and saw where I’d been drawn. I was on table 15 in seat 1. The players in seats 2, 3 and 5 were Sorel ‘Imper1um’ Mizzi, Mike ‘Timex’ McDonald, and the tournament chip leader, Sweden’s Annica Ivert. Given the breaking order, table 15 was going to remain until there were only 36 players left. Even with 362,000 chips, this was going to be a difficult day.
At that stage of my poker career, Sorel and Mike were both in my top five list of favourite poker players. Although I was gaining more confidence in my own ability on a weekly basis, I was still very much an amateur. Both of these guys had been crushing the online world for years and, unlike many, they had both transferred that success to the live scene. Sorel had racked up several final table finishes, good for over a million dollars, and Mike had won EPT Dortmund in 2008 for the same amount. When you consider that Sorel is less than a year older than me and Mike is two years younger, those are some incredible records.
I wasn’t concerned about playing against either of them, though. I think there’s a level of respect that goes with being in the same age group as another player in poker, particularly among the ‘internet generation’, and I felt like so long as I didn’t go out of my way to tangle with either of them in pots, they’d probably return the favour. In the end, that’s pretty much what happened. In fact, the three of us spent most of the early afternoon setting each other riddles and racing to see who could solve them first. All very geeky, but it seemed like we were fairly content to let the maniacal Annica Ivert run the table for a while. She was involved in every single pot for the first two levels.
My first major pot of the day was after our first break and inevitably involved Miss Ivert. I’d go as far as saying that she was the reason I lost it, even though it was Australian pro Tino Lechich who was stacking my chips afterwards. Preflop, Mr. Lechich raised under the gun to 5,000. I called in the hijack with As-Qc and Annica came along from the big blind. The three of us went to a Qd-7d-Tc flop, which despite being draw-heavy, looked pretty decent for my hand.
Both Miss Ivert and Mr. Lechich checked to me and I fired 14,000. Both of them called. I wasn’t thrilled about this because although I was confident that I had the best hand, Annica had me covered and Tino wasn’t far behind. I imagined that I might have a difficult decision on a later street. The turn was the 2h, the biggest brick in the deck. Annica fired out 27,500, a bet which was very peculiar in its sizing, even if we disregard the fact that she had check-called the flop and was now firing at a blank turn. Tino called and I was flummoxed.
I was still fairly confident that I had the best hand, because Annica had been going a little crazy in some spots and this felt like it could be another one of them. I couldn’t make a raise, though, because I would have to put in a significant portion of chips to do so and I would have to fold to a shove. I’d be turning what might be the best hand into a bluff. I absolutely hated it, but I felt like my only option was to call and hope for a safe river.
The Jc came down, which looked reasonably safe when Annica checked, but I wasn’t completely sure. Tino reached for chips and made it 50,000 without really trying to count. He just picked up a stack of chips and slammed them onto the table. I couldn't think straight. There had now been a different aggressor on every street in the hand. The most important thing for me was to completely discount Annica at this stage. I gave her a few glances to try and gather her level of interest in the pot and she seemed fairly distant. I thought I could reasonably put her on a completely unnecessary three-way air ball which she’d now given up on having gotten two calls on the turn.
So what was Tino up to? He surely knew what Annica was doing too, but his value range was so thin. The jack had filled a straight for 9-8 and A-K, but I didn’t see how he could continue with those hands on the turn when the flop aggressor was still to act behind him. J-J and Q-J would have made sense if I wasn’t in the hand, but again he would have probably had to fold those on the turn with me to act behind him. It was bizarre. I didn’t think he’d fold K-Q or A-Q on the turn, but could he now be considering all of the above and be betting with either of those hands to get me to fold exactly what I had, knowing that Annica was going to fold as soon as she had a chance? This seemed less likely with an older style pro like Tino than it would have been had the ‘villain’ been Sorel, Mike or Annica. I couldn’t think of a single hand Tino could hold that made sense other than a missed flush draw. And I even thought that he might bet A-K of diamonds on the flop, so I felt like the only hand in the deck he could now hold that beat me was 9-8 of diamonds.
I tossed calling chips into the middle and Annica got rid of her cards as quickly as she could. Tino showed me K-9 of diamonds. I grinned as I prepared to stack my winnings courtesy of a perfect read, and then it struck me – I’d missed one hand out. I’d been so concerned about how he could continue with open-ended straight draws on the turn that I hadn’t even noticed the gutshot. I was annoyed at myself, but whether spotting one more hand would have swayed my decision is debatable. Annica’s bet on the turn had screwed the whole hand up and, in my view, could have allowed Tino to make this bet on the river with a missed draw. I’d taken a hit, but I was still comfortably over average with just under 300,000.
I settled back into some riddles with Sorel and Mike and then got involved in a pot with the former, at least according to PokerNews. I honestly can’t remember what I was holding, but it looks like I played it really passively and badly, so I’ll just let you know that it cost me another 40,000 chips and leave it there! As we went off on our second break of the day, I was still feeling confident despite having lost 100,000 chips. I had known it would be tough at this table and yet I still had a very playable stack. I also knew that the money bubble was going to burst in the next hour or so and that, barring a disaster; I’d be at least $15,000 richer. Thinking about that was a great way to stave off any negative vibes I might have otherwise had.
A few minutes before the end of the break, I spotted Mike standing next to a fridge looking a little lost, so I took the chance to have a chat with him. I asked him about the hand I’d just played against Tino and he said he’d have played it the same way and then folded the river. In hindsight, I agree with him. I’m pretty sure I levelled myself on the river long before I had a strong grasp of what ‘levelling’ actually was, but I’m glad that I took the chance to get a second opinion on it at the time. Discussing hands with friends is one of my favourite ways of trying to improve my game nowadays, but in January 2009, I didn’t know anyone on the circuit, so getting some feedback on that hand was an unexpected bonus for me. We grabbed some bottled water, as Mike commented that I was the only person he’d ever seen who drank more of it at the table than he did, and headed back to our seats.
Nothing especially interesting happened until the absolute bubble was upon us. By the point of my fifth key hand of the tournament, we’d already been playing hand-for-hand for a fair amount of time. It was my first experience of hand-for-hand in a live tournament and I found it all rather boring. For the most part, I’d fold and then go watch another table for a bit while hoping that some poor soul would hurry up and lose $10,000 so that I could make $15,000.
While waiting on action to resume at my table, I witnessed an incredible hand at a nearby table which should have seen the money bubble go. To cut a long story short, the short stack got all his money in with K-8 of spades on a Kc-9c-5c flop. He was called by a player holding 4-2 off-suit, with the 2c. Pain was written all over the short stack's face when the 3c peeled off on the turn. He got up from his chair and walked off with his head in his hands, believing he was the bubble boy, but he didn't realise he could chop the pot with another club on the river. Incredibly, the dealer pulled the Ac out of the deck to put a higher flush on the board, keep the bubble intact and force the floor man to run across the Crown Poker Room to retrieve the player who thought he'd been vanquished.
I returned to my table and sat back down in the cut-off. When the dealer finished shuffling, Sorel and Mike were both still standing up talking to a friend with their backs to the table. Their cards were dead, but Mike’s small blind was in the pot and the big blind was severely short-stacked. I knew there was now no chance that action was going to get to me without at least one raise in front. In fact, action didn’t get past Annica who was under the gun. She opened the pot and the whole table folded like deckchairs to me, terrified to mix it up with the girl who had been tearing the table up for half the day. But I’d had enough. This felt like a great spot to play back at her light and slow her down a little. I knew the big blind was probably folding A-A, so I thought there was much more to gain from me trying to take down the pot post-flop instead of three-betting her now (in an obvious three-bet spot) and having to fold to a 4-bet. I looked down at 9s-3d and splashed calling chips into the pot as casually as you can do with 9-3 off-suit against a player who has you covered on the bubble. The big blind expectedly folded.
The flop came Ks-Jd-Jc, which was perfect for me. I figured I could easily come up with a line that would credibly represent a jack and that Annica would give me credit for it if I didn’t try to take the pot away from her too early. Annica bet 11,000 into around 22,000. I called, knowing that I’d never raise a jack here against a player as aggressive as she was, and she’d know that.
The turn was the Td, which was a little more awkward than I’d have liked. Annica led for 22,000 and I considered my options. I obviously wasn’t folding and I’d have to be insane to float her again here, so this was the time to raise her off the hand. But this card was awkward. It obviously filled up a couple of straights, but the good news was that she was raising any two cards under the gun in this spot, so I wasn’t as worried about A-Q as I would have been in any other circumstance. My problem was that I thought she could shove with a drawing hand over any raise I made in order to put maximum ICM pressure on me. So, I took my time to ponder my sizing and then made a raise to 77,000, leaving myself about 150,000 back. Those were without doubt the last chips I was planning to put into the pot, but I felt like I could stop her from going nuts with a flush draw by making it look like I was trying to get every chip in the middle. The last thing she’d want to do is put a quarter of a million chips into the pot drawing dead when she had such a commanding stack.
Annica eyed me up, eyed her chips up and then looked back at me again. She didn’t look like she was going anywhere. Oh dear. But then she thought better of whatever she was planning and released her hand. I began to rake in the sizeable pot, but waited until the very last moment before kicking her while she was down and flashing my 9-3 to the table. It’s something I do very rarely, but I felt like this was an ideal spot to set her up. I was sure she’d come after me post-bubble to try and exact some revenge.
The bubble popped in the next hand, but I didn’t find out until the following day when I bumped into him at the newsagents that Will Zemljaric, the friendly Canadian from Day 2, had been the one to pop it. He had tried to pull off an outrageous bluff of his own on Richard Ashby but didn’t quite get the same luck I had enjoyed when he ran head-first into a set of eights.
I couldn’t have cared less if the bubble boy was my best friend at that point, though. I tried to play it as coolly as I could, so not to appear overjoyed at winning $15,000 to the more experienced players at the table, but I was ecstatic inside. I’d pulled off my first live cash in only my second-ever live tournament and was still in a great position to make much, much more.
We were at the business end of the tournament now.
To be continued...