Continued from Part One...
Hand # 6
Blinds: 3,500/7,000(700)
Hand: Ah-As
Position: MP
Stack: 362,466
The very next hand, our friend is in the big blind and we find aces in middle position. I open for my standard min-raise and he is the sole caller. The flop comes down Kd-Th-8d. He checks and I bet exactly three quarters of the pot.
My standard c-bet would usually be considerably smaller giving me a better price on a steal when I miss flops, but against this opponent I saw no reason not to go for maximum value. I could probably have c-bet even bigger.
He calls and the turn is the Kh. This is, of course, nowhere near my favourite card in the deck as he should have a K a decent amount here. He checks it to me and I elect to check behind as a) I don’t want to get check-raised by such an unpredictable villain and b) I think I’m only going to get a maximum of one more street of value from a T or 8 anyway and I’m more likely to get that on the river if I check back the turn.
The river brings the Ts. Villain leads for 46,357 into 92,750. Great. Now every pair he could have made on the flop has got there apart from the 8, which I’d assume was the least likely anyway. My beautiful aces have effectively turned into an ace-high bluff catcher.
I think back over it and eventually come to the conclusion that a) he could have missed diamonds b) he could have a counterfeited 8 that he’s decided to bluff and c) he could have some random weird shiz that he’s played in his random weird style. I made the call. It was option c). My opponent had pulled out the ol’ backwards float with a very weak backdoor draw in the 9-6o and gone for the bluff on the river. Over three encounters with this guy I’d managed to increase my stack from 98,000 to just shy of half a million. Only once did I have to beat better than nine-high.
Hand # 7
Blinds: 12,000/24,000(2,000)
Hand: Qh-Qc
Position: Button
Stack: 517,354
The final table bubble took a long time to play out. I normally like to try and exploit this time where both remaining tables are short-handed and no one wants to be unlucky number 11. It would unfortunately be fellow Black Belt Poker community member and Orange Belt Jason Layland who would take the fall after an impressive run. On this occasion, though, it hadn’t gone as well as I’d have liked and I got to the final with half the average.
Very quickly, the shortest stack went out and a hand or two later I faced an under-the-gun raise from a decent, aggressive player to 51,777. I made it 107,331 with two queens from the button hoping to get him to jam something that he might just fold to a shove, but to my surprise the big blind almost beat me into the pot with an all-in that just had me covered.
UTG folded and I have to tell you that I wasn’t exactly loving life. I had shown quite a bit of strength three-betting an UTG opener on a nine-handed table five hands into the final and this guy couldn’t wait to cold four-bet jam. The pay-jumps at the final table mean that ICM complicates this decision a little but, at the end of the day, I had raised small to try get a jam (albeit out of a different player) and my stack wasn’t exactly deep enough to fold. I called and the BB had jacks. 8-5-3-5-A. Game on!
Hand # 8
Blinds: 30,000/60,000(6,000)
Hand: Ks-Jd
Position: SB
Stack: 2,714,936
If anyone asks me when the tournament was won, I say it was when we got four-handed. With four left I had the favourable dynamic of two passive players generally dripping their stacks away and a reg who was pretty much handcuffed in what he could do as it would be so bad for him to bust before either of them. I took advantage by ramping up the aggression, which led to a rather unconventional spot.
It was folded to me in the SB with the reg in the BB sitting on approximately 900,000 more chips than me. The two passive players had 2.3 million and 700,000 respectively. So far I had taken his blind in these spots uncontested and I was aware he wouldn’t put up with this for long. I min-raised to 120,000 and he three-bet to 280,005. Now, normally with 45 big blinds, I’d consider this a shove-or-fold spot but with such weak players waiting to bust themselves around me, I chose an unconventional, out-of-position peel for 160,005 more.
I just felt that four-handed, in a battle of the blinds, with the existing dynamic, the reg was light so often here that I could feel pretty confident I had the best hand if I was to make a pair. I considered that if I did, he would continue with his bluffs a lot and I could just call him down. If I missed, I was pretty happy to just fold and carry on with 90 percent of my stack still intact. This is not the kind of thinking I would usually subscribe to, but the dynamic at the table was pretty unique.
The flop came an attractive Kd-8s-5h and the action went check, 240,000, call. With his c-bet sizing smaller than his three-bet, I was pretty confident he was trying to bluff me here. The turn is the Ac and something odd happens. I check and he bets… 67,012 - 67,012 into a pot of just over a million! I was pretty certain this was a misclick on his part but, either way, it made it much easier to stick in the call.
The river comes the 7h and now he sticks out 960,000. The ace certainly makes up a decent part of his range, but with the weird way the hand has gone down I can make the call and still be left with 20 big blinds if I’m wrong. I click the button and he reveals Q-6o for the airball I anticipated. Weird hand, but gave me a decent chip edge on the one remaining player that posed a threat. Who would play Q-6, eh?
Hand # 9
Blinds: 50,000/100,000(10,000)
Hand: Qh-6d
Position: Button
Stack: 7,759,641
I managed to get heads-up with one of the passive players with a 5:1 chip lead and a little pressure from my pride to close it out. I won the first two hands with a min-raise and a walk. I’d normally just be setting the guy in a lot but he hadn’t been doing much jamming three-handed so I was trying to get away with min-raising.
On the third hand, I min raised K-3 off-suit and he jammed. I folded and decided to abandon the min-raise plan and just go for the shoves. Hand four gets me a walk.
On hand five, I decide to stick it in with the Q-6 off-suit. He finds As-9c and makes the call. By the turn, the board reads 8h-Ts-9s-Ks… Marv. This will be an annoying double-up. River… Qc! In a flash, it’s done.
$42,000 and a Sunday Major title. Boom. Thanks for reading.
Previous Hand4Hand articles:
European Deepstack Poker Championship 2010 (Gerard Harraghy) – Part One
European Deepstack Poker Championship 2010 (Gerrard Harraghy) – Part Two
UKIPT Coventry 2010 (Simon Mairs) - Part One
UKIPT Coventry 2010 (Simon Mairs) - Part Two
WSOP Main Event Satellite (Adam Noone) - Part One
WSOP Main Event Satellite (Adam Noone) - Part Two
Brighton UKIPT (Jamie Burland)