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Friday, February 17, 2006

Read Pauly!

Dr. Pauly is liveblogging the LA Poker Classic main event over at taopoker.blogspot.com, as usual. From the looks of things, he’s in top liveblogging form. Spaceman is also covering the event for Bluff Magazine.

I took a pretty serious look at moving to the $75 tournaments at FTP in addition to or instead of the $26s, and decided it really wasn’t worth it. They’re only about an hour shorter even though the field is one third the size, have about the same sort of money at the top, and pay fewer people because of the smaller field. Overall, it seemed like the $26s were a better investment.

Last night, while watching Battlestar Galactica DVDs with my father just before 8, I realized one of the main benefits of the $75s: It started in 5 minutes, instead of 2 hours and 5 minutes. The timing on the $10k is much better for me than the $16k (too early) or the $8k (starts at 10pm; ends after 2am). The $75 buyin $10k tournament starts at 8pm Pacific, and ends shortly after midnight if I was to make it that far. Much better situation. So, I played in my first $75 at FTP last night.

Pretty early on, I open raised with ATs, and got one caller who had position on me. The flop was pretty good: 9JQ of my suit. Nut flush with two outs to a straight flush isn’t bad. I led right out at it, and got raised. I had the other guy barely covered, and the raise was for about half of both of our stacks. I figured this was as good a time as any to slowplay and let someone else bust themselves, so I just called. The turn should have killed my action, being another low club. I checked, and after thinking a little bit, he pushed. Slowplayed aces, that he should never have let me see the flop with.

45 minutes or so into the first hour, I opened for 3x the big blind again, with 77. I got one caller in the big blind, and saw a nice looking 762 flop. I had about 4k in chips and he had me covered. No slowplaying here, I bet 2/3 the pot, and he called. The turn was an 8, so a few hands could beat me now, but I couldn’t really put someone on them. He checked again, and I made a sizeable bet. Checkraised. I really can’t put him on any hand that beats me, so I push. Instacalled, by 66, and I double up. Set over set is fun when you’re on the right end of it.

I was chip leader for a short time, and then in third place at the first break. From there, absolutely card dead. I hit my high point of around 12k in chips before the first hour was over, and I don’t think I ever broke that mark again. I wasn’t playing just to cash, and was stealing when I had the opportunity, but for the most part just didn’t get anything playable. My 87o woulda flopped a pair and busted both AJ and AK. My Q2o UTG woulda seen a flop of 222 (second time in a week I’ve folded quad 2s preflop; the first time in the $8k on Monday: image). For the most part, fold fold fold steal fold fold fold. Somewhere in the middle, I did bust a shortstack with TT vs 33 when I made quads. I didn’t even get to say TQB! in the chat because I got moved immediately afterwards.

I probably had an m of 5 when we got down to the final two tables, and in the money. I open-pushed with 76s, and got called by AKo. Not a bad situation, being only a 58/42 underdog, almost a coinflip. The flop of AAA killed my chances, with my 6 on the turn not exactly helping me, and I busted to quads in 16th place for $135 payout on my $75. Pretty happy with that for my first $75. I don’t know how often I’ll actually play them, because I still think the $26s are a better investment. I just wish they had one at 8 or 9pm pacific.

I am definitely going to try to keep riding the rush until my tournament luck runs out.