Game On at FullTilt

Well, I jumped the gun a bit yesterday. It appears FullTilt was just in the middle of upgrading its software and tournament schedule and the doublestack and sitngo's are back in business.

On a side note I played a bit of $1/2 blind Holdem over at World Poker Exchange and pulled down a small win. I really hope they can get more people to populate this site because 100% rakeback is KILLER good. Right now, there are usually only a table or two at each of the lower level limits.

World Poker Exchange

FullTilt pulls a switcharoo

So I've been really getting into these FullTilt doublestack tournaments which allow for a pretty good amount of skill to be utilized. Last night after my high finish I decided to jump right in to another tournament which was $75 buyin and 231 people. I managed to work my way through the field until there was 21 people left. People who play tournaments alot are aware you usually find yourself in quite a few "race" situations where you have a pair vs an opponents overcards or vice versa. In this tournament I found myself in no such situations so didn't have a need to "get lucky" until my last hand... which should tell you how it ended. I am pretty short stacked at this point although the average stack size is still in pretty safe territory. I look at my screen and pick up a pretty big hand, JJ. The pot got raised before me and I decided to push and then someone overcalled and the original raiser called. The hands were AK vs KQ vs JJ giving me a 45% shot at taking down a triple up pot to get me in contention for the big $. Well an ace came on the river and I headed for the door after barely squeaking into the money.

Despite how that tournament ended, I was really looking forward to playing more of these types of tournaments but FullTilt totally changed their tournament schedule and games around today. The good pickins for tournaments is now very slim and I'm left bummed out. I tried a 45 man $22 buy in only to find out that now only the starting chips stack was half like I expected but the blind levels were twice as fast! This tournament quickly became an all out all in fest after about an hour. Sufficed to say, I need to find a new site to play my tournaments on.

3rd place finish in $55 buy in 54 man tournament

Over at FullTilt I decided to play a $55 buyin 54 man 6-man table sitngo with doublestacks. We ended up at the final table in about 3 hours, so this tourament gave a huge amount of play for the buyin (similar to the $22 buyins I described in my previous blog). I'll admit it took some luck to get there but I did manage to play fairly well on top. I played almost 400 hands and never once got aces or kings and had queens once and jacks once. I did manage to crack a pair of queens with T3 in a blind vs blind battle that scooted me into the money instead of leaving in 7th place. The tournament payed 6 places and there were 7-9 players for a good 45 minutes before the final table and $ started. It was basically an all in fest for the short stacks of which I was one at this time. In the final table I managed a couple of double ups when I raised PF and got all in on the flop with top pair with a good kicker that held up. Down at the final 3 I almost had 3/4 of the chips in play. We had a huge preflop all in race where I had AQ and my opponent had JJ. The flop came AK3 so I was almost jumping out of my chair. My hopes were dashed when a J fell on the turn and a blank on the river. I still had plenty of chips left but slowly ground down as I lost hand after hand. I never let up though and kept raising pots in position with basically garbage since that is what I was getting. A few hands in a row my opponent managed to flop something so I got down to about 10 big blinds and went all in with KJ only to run into AJ and bounce.

I'm really looking forward to some live play though in Vegas. I hope to improve on my observation skills which Phil Hellmuth says is 70 percent of live poker. Some previous coworkers, Andrew, Scott, and Mark, are all heading to Vegas as well so it will be great to see them again since it has been a few months.

90 Man Tournament Win

It's been a year or more since I've been in "tournament mode" but with my Vegas trip coming up soon and the plan to play a bunch of tournaments there, I felt the need to practice up online some. I found some pretty good tournaments over at FullTiltPoker. They have 3 styles of tournaments: turbo which is crazy luck fast blind increases, regular which has 10 min blind increases and starting chips of 1500, and double stack which has you starting with 3000 chips and gives a ton of play. I'd say these double stack tournaments are the best way to get practice at both deep stack and short stack play. I've been playing mostly the $22 buyin 90 man sit and go touraments which start as soon as they fill up (about once an hour or so). I even managed a win and a 5th place finish so far out of about a dozen tournaments.

On that note, I picked up a new book called Poker Tournament Formula which I can confidently say has changed my game more than any other book I've read, which is quite a mountain of books (around 30). When playing tournaments you have 3 weapons at your disposal: chips, cards, and position. Since most tournaments have pretty short stacks compared to blinds I was limitting myself to mostly playing my cards. I've found since reading this book that position raises and continued agression can pick up quite alot of chips during a tournament if the right conditions show up. You should never allow yourself to just be blinded out because you didnt pick up some big hands preflop. I suggest you pick up this book if you play any number of tournaments.