Nothing really went my way in what was a tough tournament. My starting table seemed ok, there were what appeared to be three marks, though everyone else seemed very competent. The worse players got dispatched very quickly, sometimes by being unlucky and sometimes by doing something dumb. After that winning chips became very difficult. There was pretty consistent 3-betting, squeezing and lots of cold 4-betting. I would think any edge I have over the good tournament regulars would be playing better post flop than them. Unfortunately the incessent pre flop aggression makes it very difficult to see flops. Although the younger regs sometimes take this too far (by for example, squeezing a hand like 8Ts in position when they could call and see a multi-way flop with a great hand), it makes life very difficult, so it clearly works well. Unfortunately the regs are going to be a lot better than me at identifying good spots to 3-bet/4-bet/squeeze etc. I usually decide to 3-bet for reasons like 'I haven't done it in a while'.
My stack dwindled from a starting 30k to 20k before I doubled with JJ vs TT and got moved table. Once I came back from the break I raised the 1st hand and got 3-bet and folded. Next hand I opened and got 3-bet again by same guy and folded. He showed AQ. I could not beat that. A few hands later I double barrell TQdd on JxJx8d6d8x and give up on river and get shown 98. Next hand I raise co with randon hand, sb 3-bets, I 4-bet, he snap 5-bets, I do a fold.
It was at this point I figured my image wasn't fantastic and with a small stack I decide I'm not really going to get involved in pots without an actual hand unless it's too good of a spot to turn down. Obviously for the next 1.5 hours I get dealt eff all and do a lot of folding. I considered one decent squeeze spot with 62o but decided against it and eventually saw the raiser had KK and the caller TT. Must be nice.
The announcement of the last four hands of the day was called and utg opens, mp 3-bets and I have AQo in the bb with 33bbs. Utg player was playing pretty straight forward/tightish and bottom of his utg opening range is probably like JTs. I thought he could fold hands up to 99 if I ship though. MP was new to the table and had a lot of chips, and perhaps more importantly lots of ante chips. I decided to ship it and utg folded a millisecond before mp snapped with aces. GG.
Muzone also busted on day 1 so we spent the next few days wandering around Madrid, mostly just chilling out. Once Japete busted he became our tour guide and translator and showed us some lovely bars and restaurants. We also went to see Real vs CSKA Moscow at the Bernabeu. Amazing stadium and great game, albeit rather easy for Real as they won 4-1. I made a couple of bets which of course I wiffed, as did Muzone. You might not believe this but Japete cleaned up. You didn't think his run good was limited to poker did you?
I'm now back on the online grind. March has been going very average. I was putting together a few small winning days in a row but lost a decent chunk today. I was playing one of the tightest hu players I have ever encountered and it was quite fun to just 3-bet and barrell him incessently, because doing so is quite far removed from my default game. His game plan worked out well in the end though when he went on to hit the nuts a lot and being the fish I am, I make hero calls vs him. The last hand he 3-bets 86 and goes for the check/bet/check-raise line on 22868 and I bet/call river with K6.
I haven't been playing too much on PKR recently due to a lack of games running, and more recently because of some bugs in the software that are quite annoying. I've been playing more on a euro site which has very good action but the rake is high, especially in hu games where it caps at 5 euros. I'm going to keep playing there a bit to see if the good action is worth the rake (I do get 35% rb fwiw).
Got some more interesting things going on in April. It's my birthday on the 5th (28!) so will be going out that weekend. The weekend after theres UKIPT Nottingham which somehow is going to be a £1mill prize pool for a £700 tournament. Sounds like everyone is going so should be fun. Weekend after I might go to WPT Marbella. A few people had mentioned going but not too much recently so maybe interest has cooled. That's probably a last minute decision one. Then last weekend of April off to the Prince of Malpas Royal Estate somewhere in the Cheshire countryside. For someone as lazy as me that's an action packed month. I'll probably spend Monday-Fridays sleeping.
Check out this video which Muzone posted on twitter recently:
I forgot how much I love this video. There's so many great quotes in it. The guy just loves the game!
