For those of you who have already started reading this blog, you know that I’m a merely decent low-limit player. From that, you might infer that I’m even less able at other games and varieties of hold ’em.
You’d be right. Thus, a post on last friday’s 10-man no-limit tournament
What I’ve done so far: I have read Sklansky’s Tournament Poker for Advanced Players and Cloutier and McEvoy’s Championship no-limit and pot limit book. I’ve also practiced for many hours on Wilson’s Tournament simulator; on the ten table tournament on “tough”, I make it to the final table a large percentage of the time, but it’s not like that means anything. A few weeks back, my friend bought me into a no-limit tournament, with like 50 people, starting with like 100 chips and blinds at 1-2, with the blinds doubling every 8 minutes – a veritable luck fest, I came in 12 or so. I’ve played two home game tournaments of 6 people, one of which I won.
Again, not like any of that matters – it’s one thing to have a vague feel for no-limit, it’s another thing to actually play it well. And a very vague feel I have indeed.
What really matters is that the game was me, my older bro, and then my step-bro and 7 of his 16 year old friends. Nice kids, the whole lot of them, but also plenty of dead money. A lot of them play no-limit like limit – making minimum pre-flop raises from UTG and underbetting large pots, and then overbetting small pots. Many of them also bluff far too frequently and in trouble spots. It was one of those situations where, as long as you caught just some cards, you could wait for them to bluff into you, just so long as, early on, you show down some cheap bluffs to set them up.
And catch cards did I ever. Froze up some of the weaker ones with flop raises to get my free card on the turn, letting the aggressive ones come to me when I flopped trips that turned into quads and full houses. At one point, the blinds doubled, and one kid was about to be blinded out. I raise in MP with pocket deuces to try to put him all in heads-up, raising something like 6 times the size of the BB, which was only about 2/9 of my stack, hoping others would drop – well, another person with few chips called, put him on overcards, and the low chips kid folds. I hit the third deuce, check, he goes all in, and I quickly call – he had AT, hit the T on the flop.
We get down to four, the spots we’re going to pay out to. My older brother is left – not experienced either, but he has a brain. A super aggressive, somewhat knowledgeable player is left – apparently, he has to leave soon, so he has gone into overaggressive mode, bluffing away a ton of chips into my full house. And then the best of my step-bros friends is left – I played with him in a no limit ring game earlier in the week, and he far and away showed he knew what he was doing.
At some point, I pick up 66, and the super aggressive player raises big. I know he has overcards, and not even premium ones – he’s just pushing because he knows he has to leave. At this point, I am the chip leader, close to 2-1 on him. Even if I doubled him up here, I’d be more than twice as much as the other two players. I want to win the whole thing – I already have my buy-in back, and first gets 20 bucks, v. just 7.50 for second. Taking him out now would put me up to something lik 825 v. 100 v 75 in chips. At best, maybe he just folds here; at worst, I have a slight edge in the coin flip. I put him all in, he calls, he shows AJo. I win the hand.
Bold or stupid? Wait, bold and stupid. But who was stupider? Me or him?
Better of my step-bro’s friends takes out my brother, and it’s heads up. I don’t remember the chip count, but, call it 750-250. If we were even players, he should win the freeze out 1/4 of the time. But, as he proved, we’re not even players – he outplayed me, which combined with a dreadful hour’s worth of cards.
I pushed too hard to knock him out all at once, and got punished for it when he showed me Aces. I tried to just keep hammering at him with raises, but he was holding strong, and I was not catching cards – you gotta play a lot of hands heads-up, I know – and with my chip lead I wanted to try to be aggressive against him, but my cards just weren’t enough. When I did catch good cards, he had better cards. I wanted to set him up with my pushes with less than premium hands, but if I never catch cards, how can I set him up?
One terrible hand for me: I have T7o, see the flop from the BB. Flop comes with a 7 and an A, and two clubs. I bet the pot, he thinks calls. I’m thinking, does he have another A? When the T falls on the turn, I think, can I set him up. He checks to me, I check back, and then another club falls on the river. Was he just on a draw? Did I just give him a free card? I’m hoping that he’ll see my big bet as just trying to represent the flush, and he’ll have the pair of Aces, but he’s actually got the flush. I should have just taken the pot on the turn, or forced him to make a decision.
By now, it’s been long enough that the blinds are huge, because we’ve just been duking back and forth for awhile. He’s now slightly outchipping me, and the combined blinds are like 1/3 of my stack. He raises from the SB, I try to pick it up there with ATo, and he thinks and says, “I have the fourth best hand in no-limit,” and I knew it then – he’s got AK, totally dominating me, he calls, and I’m toast. It was quite a comeback by him, because he was nearly all out at one point.
A truly humbling experience. I knew going into it that my heads-up game is the weakest aspect of my no-limit game. In the simulations, that’s my biggest weak spot. And I ran into a player who withstood aggression and pushed back in ways that I could not get my head around. With a total lack of face cards in my hands, and the flops missing me by a mile, I just couldn’t deal.
I still “won”, in that I cashed, but not the way I was thinking it would turn out.