No Limit Baby!

Tuesday Jul 13, 2004

WARNING: The Following is a long entry. If you are not interested in all of the details of my poker tournament please feel free to skim down to the bottom. Thanks for reading.

Lucky Chances casino, just 8 miles south of my home in San Francisco, is where I planned to stake my claim. $3,000 Guaranteed - $45 tournament with a $40 re-buy option. The game began at 10:30 am which is exactly when I arrived. A bit nervous and a bit fatigued I bought my placard and found my seat at table 4 seat 5 where $1,000 in chips and a table hungry and eager awaited those magic words, “Deal ‘em up.”

Monitors hung around the room. They displayed information on the blinds, what round it was, how many active players were in the tournament, what the pay outs would be, and how much time remained in the round. The clock began with 120 players active in the day’s game.

Round 1: $25 - $25 Blinds, 10 minutes on the clock. I laid low for awhile sizing up the others. The table was almost silent. I was the youngest player by at least 5 years. Wearing my Magglio Ordonez 2003 All Star Jersey at a LA Dodgers cap I wanted everyone at the table to see me as ‘Dead Money’, which basically means unthreatening and inexperienced. While I myself was out to prove that I was not in fact ‘Dead Money’ I still didn’t want to attract much attention. Chips kept exchanging hands while my stack slowly depleted.

Round 2: $50 - $25 Blinds, 10 minutes on the clock. Time to make my move. With A – 9 unsuited I bet $200. The gentleman to my left, either sensing weakness, or just loving his cards promptly went all in. The next 8 players folded and it was back to me. I more than covered his chips but with only $700 or so left at this point I wasn’t that in love with what I had. I too mucked my cards and lost $200 for nothing. For the remainder of the round I felt a pressure to get involved. I was in second to last at the table and needed to start taking risks. 2-7 unsuited, generally viewed as the absolute worst starting hand in poker. “I’m all in.” A woman sporting a 49’ers hat called. Q – 3 of hearts. People were shocked by my move. The flop: 7, 3, 5 – no hearts. I now had to worry only about 3’s and Queens. The turn…a 2. With two pair I still had to worry about Q’s and 3’s. And the river…A Queen.

Left only with my orange buy back button (which I had though was worth a thousand dollars earlier in the day), I bought back in for $40 and received $1500 in chips. I figured I had a good read on a couple players and I came to have fun not to be a tight wad.

Round 3: $100 - $50 Blinds. 15 minutes on the clock. I started really looking around. The man two seats to my right went all in and the card shark Tim called him. The man flipped pocket Jacks, Tim flipped Aces. The flop, A, A, 5. Seat open, and I’m not in last!! Truth be told I was scared to be the first person to leave the room so this was a big moment. I began making goals for myself: just last until 100 players remain, just make it until round 4, etc. A few hands later the gentleman directly to my right went all in and Tim the Ace man called again. The Gentleman flipped King’s, Tim flipped Ace Queen suited. The flop of course had an Ace for Tim, the turn helped no one and the river carried a Queen to add insult to injury. Two seats now open, and I was surviving.

Round 4: Ante $25 a person, Blinds $100 - $200. With a bit of money now in his stack I started to want to play against Tim. I figured he was eyeing me since he had single handedly cleared out my side of the table and I was next in the pattern. After some foolish mistakes trying to up blinds and having people call all in against me forcing me to fold I finally caught something worth playing….sort of. 3 – 3. A gentleman two seats to my left called all in and once again I figured I might as well make a move, though to tell you the truth I was a bit embarrassed playing with those cards. He flipped his King Queen suited and it was on. The flop, Queen, Ace, Ten. He now had a higher pair and a straight draw. Six on the turn. And on the river….A 3! I doubled up and now had a bit of power.

A few minutes left in the round and I had done a bit of bullying myself stealing some blinds and padding my stack. But still it was Tim I needed to take down and soon I’d have an opportunity to do just that. Sadly I must report that these details are sketchy. My heart was running a mile a minute and so the cards have been lost to me. Here is a rough sketch of what occurred. Tim and I ended up playing two consecutive hands heads up both times of which he called All in. The first time he had me covered so if I had lost I would have been out of the tournament. I won the first hand mostly by luck, but the second hand was actually viewed as a move of skill. Tim, a bit on tilt by losing a majority of his chips to dead money in the corner wanted to win them back and challenged me once again with an all in. This time I had Queens in the pocket and wasn’t going to let him off the hook. Plus I knew he was bluffing and trying to buy the investments already on the table. I called and low and behold I read him perfectly. I won the two hands and as round 3 came to a close I was the chip leader in the tournament with over $20,000 in chips and 45 or so players remaining.

During the break between rounds a few players came up to talk with me to offer congratulations. One strong player from our table took me aside to coach me about the situation. He said that if I stuck to my game and didn’t act recklessly that I would have a seat at the final table. But that I needed to stay focused, not worry about the leader board or the money, but just to play my game. I was flattered, I was overwhelmed, and I was proud of myself.

Round 5 – Ante $50 a person, Blinds $200 - $400. While I was away they had converted all of my chips into bigger denominations. What once was well over 200 chips was now about 35. I didn’t love this but I figured it made me less likely to play. And play I did not. I laid low for as long as I could even folding away Ace’s if they didn’t have a suited friend or a face card for company.

Round 6 – Ante $75, Blinds $300 - $600. Players kept coming and going. The tournament kept shrinking and shrinking. People arriving at the table had more chips than I. I needed to start playing a bit more before the antes and blinds ate away all of my lead. Whenever a player with just a few thousand to their name would go all in and I had a face card I’d call. On three or four consecutive calls by me I would lose even though my pocket hand was superior. Luck was no longer running along with me.

Rounds 7 through 10 are a blur. I kept thinking stick to your game. Don’t worry about the other players, don’t worry about the clocks, the blinds, the antes. Just keep playing smart. Then my nemesis arrived. Probably the best player I saw the entire day. Either he read me like a book or he just liked his hand but in any case the hand we played together was the momentum swing of my day.

My nemesis went ahead and called my big blind and was the only one to do so at the table. I, giving no indication of my hand, went ahead and checked the option to raise with my Q-7 suited. The flop came and with it brought the Ace of Clubs, the Queen of diamonds, and the 4 of Clubs. I checked fearing he had an ace or clubs and he followed suit checking as well. At this point I had to assume that I had the best pair since he didn’t bet on the Ace. Along came the two of diamonds. Now two flush draws on the table so I checked again hoping that he would bet and that I could call and get some momentum my way. He of course went all in which I quickly called assuming at worst I was playing a flush draw with my top pair and I was willing to take my 3 to 1 odds on that battle. He flipped and had the Ace! His slow play of the card and read of my situation baffled me. I still don’t know how he did it and really admire the way he handled the hand. It ended up bringing me down to about $5000.

Eventually I got moved to another table. There were now only 24 players left in the tournament. With the antes at $300 and the blinds at $600 - $1200 at this point I needed to win a hand quick if I wanted to make it to the final 10. After a bit of time I finally got something I liked, a pair of queens. A gentleman ahead of me in betting order called all in for about $2000 in chips. With all those antes and blinds there was well over $6800 at stake which would definitely be enough to get me back in the thick of the competition. I called. He flipped over Jacks. And wouldn’t you know it, I was winning all the way until the river when he caught another Jack. Oh lady luck how you despise me.

Still despite the antes and the blinds I was sticking around with my few chips. According to the board there were now only 18 players left. A minute later we were consolidated. I was at one of the final two tables. I was on the blind for $2400 which coincidentally was all I had left….I was automatically all in. Before our hand was dealt two men were knocked off the other table. 16 remained. The bets went around our table, two men called which brought another all in. We flipped, man to my left Ace 8, man to my right Ace 5, and I had Ace 6. The fourth ace popped up on the flop but my six never saw the light of day and ace 8 ended my run. According to the dealer since my hand was superior to the Ace 5 I officially took 15th place on the day.

15th out of 120 - Not bad for dead money.

In conclusion, no matter how good you get at poker a lot of the game is still luck. Even when I got outsmarted by nemesis and even when I had the intuition to call Tim’s bluff, anyone can catch cards if you are betting big before all the cards have been shown. If and when I play in another tournament I will hopefully get the opportunity to bet on the turns and rivers a bit more. I’m sure that that would be the case at the final table. But perhaps with the ticking clock and ante blind situation everyone feels the pressure to be aggressive. At any rate, I’m not bad at this stuff.

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No Limit Baby!

Tuesday Jul 13, 2004