Sunday Noon Gates Tournament

Scrupboy wrote:

idh78 wrote:randomn thought.....I really really suck at poker when I'm sober...that is all, carry on gentlemen.

So how was the B-Day and the poker play at The Lodge? Still can't believe you couldn't stumble over to the GG. I would have bought you a shot to help with that hangover.

EDIT - Just saw that you have a thread about your trip. Veddy Nice!

nope I just wanted to get outta there...we actually left by like 10:45 so I wasn't sure if you guys were going to be there yet or not

Scrupboy wrote:There is always some poor play in these tourneys and you will find that at any level of tournament. It's pretty easy to place all players into a few categories of play type (tight, textbook, maniac) and I think that's the key. A lot of these players will play the same method throughout the entire tournament, the key is to adjust to their styles and switch yours up based on them. With the stacks as deep as they are in the beginning you will find me playing a wide variety of hands, especially if I feel that I can out play the person post flop. Calling 7-9 is not a great hand to play, but if you feel that you have a good read on a person, I would play it at the beginning stages of a tournament. It can also be disquised very well if you flop a monster. Earlier in this tournament I called some pretty big bets form a guy with pocket deuces. The flop comes A-x-x all diamonds. He makes a very large bet and all fold. I am last to act and know that he doesn't have a diamond and one of my deuces is a diamond. The diamond falls on the turn and I value bet as well as on the river. I say, "deuce of diamonds." and show my hand to where he throws his cards at the dealer face up revealing A-Q spades and mumbles about what a horrible call I made. The point is, you can loosen up your game early and see more flops with the amount of starting chips we had. There were many times where I feel I laid down the best hand PF or on the flop, but the amount bet was ridiculous and not worth it early in this tournament. Play should be relevant to the blind structure and chips in play, but there are still a lot of players that don't take this in consideration. Sorry about my rambling, just my thoughts.

I hope that you get back into the game soon as I'm sure you will do well on your second stint.

Good room read, of course, Son. That said, you might have missed out on the craziest part of our table, since I don't think you sat down until after the dude left. Older guy in....#3 seat, I think it was. He was calling PF and on flop, and on turn with any A. Any A at all. And when he was moved, he had about 25k in chips. I think he folded one river the entire time he was at the table. Made the table hard to play early (for others, anyway, because I had shit cards the entire first hour), because you couldn't get rid of him, and you weren't going to win a pot against him without a made hand. I should mention just about ever time, an A showed up on the board eventually. He was the only guy to win a pot off me other than the guy who won 4 pots and took me out, when he outkicked me with a crappy kicker, passively calling my seemingly value bets all the way down.

But it also made it hard to play looser early, because if he was in a hand, he always had one or two overs, and they always hit. In fact, he never showed down a losing hand, and yet never showed down a monster, either. Still, I don't think the play I saw at my one table was any better than the $20+2s I play at Bodog.

Mondogarage wrote:Good room read, of course, Son. That said, you might have missed out on the craziest part of our table, since I don't think you sat down until after the dude left. Older guy in....#3 seat, I think it was. He was calling PF and on flop, and on turn with any A. Any A at all. And when he was moved, he had about 25k in chips. I think he folded one river the entire time he was at the table. Made the table hard to play early (for others, anyway, because I had shit cards the entire first hour), because you couldn't get rid of him, and you weren't going to win a pot against him without a made hand. I should mention just about ever time, an A showed up on the board eventually. He was the only guy to win a pot off me other than the guy who won 4 pots and took me out, when he outkicked me with a crappy kicker, passively calling my seemingly value bets all the way down.

But it also made it hard to play looser early, because if he was in a hand, he always had one or two overs, and they always hit. In fact, he never showed down a losing hand, and yet never showed down a monster, either. Still, I don't think the play I saw at my one table was any better than the $20+2s I play at Bodog.

These people are the toughest to play. It reminds me of the drunk ass at a bar game that ends up with a shit load of chips and loses them all in 5th place. Perhaps this strategy of playing every hand worked momentarily for this person, but this guy loses all his chips in the long run. I clearly understand what you are saying about not allowing loose calls with a person playing this style of poker. The only thing you can do with this type of person is bet big, bigger then normal to get him off any kind of draw or potential runners. Only problem with this is you will be investing a lot of chips with mediocre hands and you must have position on other players to make this work. I tend to stay away from this type of strategy against this type of player until I have enough chips built up to battle. Also sounds like he is a calling station so there is no reason to get too creative early on and use a more passive strategy. He will most likely just call and if you keep the pot low by making small bets, you minimize your losses against his lucky catches. Let him see the turn and river for cheap with mediocre hands and let the cards speak at the end with little risk to your chip stack. In the end he is the guy that you know will not win the tournament and you just hope that you are the lucky recipient to some of those chips.

After you left Mondo, I went on the tight image. I showed monsters after receiving no callers in the BB, SB and button. This allowed me to steal blinds and take down hands post flop with rags. The table was kind of loose and the only way I was able to steal pots was by representing strong hands every time. When I was caught, I'd do my normal chatting of tough decisions and call out their hand which did two things for me. Made it appear that my second nuts were no good and that I was a genius card reader. Of course, I did not place in the tourney so what do I know.