Finally some time, and some luck

This past weekend, with the kids sound asleep, I was able to play some online poker, and have had some success. After fizzling out early in 2 consecutive tournaments, I decided to play 2 tournaments at the same time. $3.30 and $6.60 buy-ins to my favorite 90 player, double-stack, turbo, knockout tournaments. I find these formats very comfortable, because you have enough chips to play with early on thanks to the double-stack, but the turbo structure means it never lasts more than 4 hours. The top 9 pay, and I am happy to report that I cashed in both tournies.

As with ever tournament, there always seems to be 1 or 2 significant hands that either knock you out of contention, or put you in a very good position to win. Both tournaments had such hands.

In the $3.30 tournament, in which I won the whole thing for a prize total of $72, I actually had 2 very significant hands, and both against the same guy. The first hand, I was getting pretty low in chips, so when the table chip leader re-raised me all-in, and I had KK, it was an automatic call. Well, he had AA, and I was sure my night was done. The flop was 10-J-4, and when a Q showed up on the river, I knew I had 6 outs to win. I could hit one of four nines to make the straight, but somehow, online poker loves a little more irony, and I hit one of 2 remaining aces to make the highly unlikely straight and double up. 3 or 4 hands later, after an awesome rush of cards, I was in 1st place, with 25 players left, and I cruised into the final table.

Now down to the final 6, the blinds are getting pretty steep, and my chip stack is about average. The guy I played that previous hand against made a nice comeback, and is the clear chip leader. UTG, I raise the standard amount with AK, and he immediately re-raises me all-in. I'm not a fan of AK, but hard to lay it down in this situation, so I make the call, risking it all.

As I had hoped, he had an Ace as well, but with a Q kicker, and when a K hit on the flop, I felt pretty good about the situation, and I doubled-up again off of him, putting me about even with him. From there, I was very patient, picked my spots nicely, and by the final 3, I had at least 80% of all chips in play. It was just a matter of time... or so I thought.

That same guy managed who I'd double-up off of twice managed to eliminate the 3rd player, and after a few wins against me, he was the chip leader, but for some reason I never felt like I was losing control. I'm very comfortable heads-up, and I knew he was just on a bit of a rush. He was clearly not used to heads-up play, and from that point on, I dominated the match, until his all-in with KQ was beaten by my A-10.

Meanwhile, in the $6.60 game I was playing at the same time, I didn't have as much luck, and I was in severe danger of not even breaking the top 30 until this hand came along.

Holding K-Q, UTG, I make a small raise. It was a pretty weak move, as I was fairly short-stacked, and I knew that if someone pushed me all-in, I may have to call. Luckily, I got 3 callers, and already the pot total was almost equal to my chip count, so any decent flop would probably have me pushing the rest of my chips in. To call this flop decent is the understatement of the year.

The flop is K-K-Q, I flop the nuts and a full-house, almost impossible for any hand to beat at this point, so with 3 others still in the hand, I have to check and home for some action, but everyone else check too.

The turn is a J, I figure this should be enough now with 4 high card, 3 to a straight, 3 to a flush on board, that someone will make the first move. I was wrong, and checks all around bring the river card, which thankfully is a 10. Doesn't make 4 cards to the flush, but at least I know someone has to have an Ace, I should get pair here.

I bet half of what I have, and I'm immediately re-raised all-in, and that bet is immediately called by the next player. The last player folds, showing an ace, and making the very disciplined play. I show my KQ, and the other two hands auto-fold, more than tripling-up. The guy who called first claimed he had the Ace as well for the straight, the other guy says he had JJ for the lower full house.

I rode that one hand into the final table, but was completely card-dead, and finished 7th, collecting about $12 for my efforts. Still, in 2 simultaneous tournaments, I made more than 8x my investment in less than 4 hours. I've actually found that I play better poker when I play 2 tournies at the same time. It does make things harder to focus on understanding your opponents style of play, but I also find I play a more sound style of poker, and don't make dumb moves that I'm sometimes prone to doing.

Tis the season

Ok, I guess my plans of playing some poker recently were ill-conceived. Between a full-time job, wife, kids and the Christmas season upon us, I have had no time to play poker. I have watched some poker, tho, especially the 2008 National Heads-Up Poker Championships.

Lots of fun poker to be seen here, but heads-up is unlike any other form of poker. I have always felt I've been pretty good at heads-up play, and I have a pretty solid record to back it up, including winning a recent double-elimination heads-up tournament, where I went 6-1 in 7 matches played, but I've come to a specific realization about heads-up poker.

There is less skill involved in heads-up play.

It's still very tough to play, and requires a lot of skill, but when it's down to one-on-one play, luck seems to be a much greater factor. You are forced to play a lot more hands, of a lot poorer quality than (hopefully) you would normally want to play. So now you can justify calling a small preflop raise with a marginal hand, maybe even a terrible hand, knowing that your opponent may have raised preflop just to try and make you fold. Also, knowing it is just you vs him, and no chance of a 3rd party entering the pot, you know that even a brutal hand like 7-2 isn't that big and underdog versus 2 unpaired overcards, so calling a $200 raise with $400 already in the pot is mathematically the right thing to do.

So now you're going to see a flop, after calling a small riase, maybe you hit bottom pair, maybe not. Your opponent makes the obvious continuation bet. If you hit something, maybe anything at all, you could probably feel pretty comfortable pushing all-in here, but if you didn't hit anything, it's pretty hard to call in this situation unless you plan on smooth-calling to bluff on the turn or river.

No matter what happens, catching a piece of the flop is more important than ever. All 4 matches I watched last night showed how important it was to be lucky. One player would catch something on the flop, and you could tell they were very comfortable in the hand, because they knew the odds are less than 30% that any 2 random cards connect at all with a random flop.

Mike "The Mouth" Matusow actually made one hell of a brilliant lay down, playing against Chris "Jesus" Ferguson. Mike raised preflop with K-3, Chris called with Q-10, and the flop was K-10-10. I cringed immediately, knowing this could mean the end of the always entertaining Matusow, but after he checked the flop, and called Ferguson's bet on the turn, he was able to fold on the river and not pay off anymore. He did it almost without hesitation, and I was very impressed.

Overall, my point is very simple. Luck is a significant factor in poker no matter what style of game you're playing, it just seems to be a little more prevalent during heads-up, but Mike proves that skill is still the deciding factor in most cases, you just need to have the skill and discipline to make the right plays, despite what odds may dictate.

Short and Sweet

I'm starting to get back in to poker again, after having very little interest in the world of poker for many months. I apologize to all my loyal readers (that's a joke, I have none) and I hope that soon I will be back to blogging at least 2-3 times per week.

My upcoming plans include a trip to the local Casino, where I will probably bring $500 to a $2/$5 game, and to resume playing online again.