Back in Town

Well I went to Toronto and St. Catharines for the week. I got to say hello to my family, and goodbye to my uncle Tony who is going to Australia for at least a year. I also played in the golf tournament I talked about, and I guess I was a little rusty to say the least. I shot 81 in the first round which was ok seeing as I finished triple, bogey, double. So being 10 over on the round, I was 6 over on the last 3 holes. I hit the ball really well and was happy with how I played. Now for the second round on Sunday it was a totally different story. I shot my worst round in about 5 years, which was 93. I honestly couldn't hit a shot to save my life. I'm not sure if it was because of getting up at 6:30am two days in a row, but everything went wrong.

After the round we went to St. Catherarines for a couple days, to see Kristen's family. For some reason when ever I go to Krissy's I seem to do really well in poker. It was there that we finished 8th in the Sunday 215 Poker Stars tournament about a year ago for around 16k. I finished 2nd in a $100 mtt there on Christmas break for about 4k. And on the weekend I won a $20 180 person sit and go for $1080 (I will talk more about it below). Before the tournament cash I went on a sick run in heads up. I won about 10 in a row and was above my goal to move up to .50/1.

After the run heads up I played in the 180 person. Throughout the entire tourney I got the money all in behind 3 times. The first time was just sick, and I will explain why I did it below. The second time I got it all in pree with AQ against AK, when we were 4 handed. I really wanted to fold but, I had pretty good odds to call, and it wouldn't hurt me that much. I called and lost. Lastly when we were 3 handed I got it all in pree flop with QQ against KK, and flopped a Q. So although I was lucky, if I hadn't been completely controlling the last 2 tables I would have been out with the AQ hand. When we were on the bubble of 19 players, everyone was playing crazy tight, so I in turn played crazy loose aggressive. I raised every other hand, and improved my stack from 19k to 56k without showing down once. On the final table I continued to play loose, mostly with re steals, that really helped me win. When we got to heads up, my experience really helped, as he clearly hadn't played much heads up before. I completely dominated him and won easily. I think this was one of the best tourney's that I played. It was the first time that I really loosened up late in the tourney when the table was tight, and it really worked well. Here is the disgusting suck out I had:

http://www.liquidpoker.net/h/54140 - Basically I'm raising any 2 pree here. Now he comes over the top. I raised to 4500, he made it 8000 total and he has about 11500 behind. Now there is 13300 in the pot with our bets, and the blinds and antes. My thinking is that he could have AA, KK, QQ, or AK, AQ, AJ. For some reason I really didn't think he had AA, even though that is what seems reasonable here. But I didn't think so. I had been raising a lot of hands so he would take a stand with a wider range of hands. I'm getting 3-1, and he has 11k behind that there is a good chance that I will get it all if I flop a huge hand. I also thought that there was a good chance that a 10 or 5 would give me the lead after the flop, and if an ace came I could probably bluff him off it if he played it weak. So after the flop he checks to me, and I decide to make my move. Whoops, pretty sick suck out though.

So anyway it was a fun couple of days, and it was my best couple of days in poker for a while this summer. I'm not sure if I'm going to play .50/1, or stick with the heads up and mtt's until I cool down a bit. I will let you know the plan in a couple of days when I figure it out.......