Poker Poker Poker

What's this? Another post? On the same day? Yes! It's double post day! Since I've been a little busy lately I'm making up for it by posting twice today. Maybe this is a sign that I will finally right the ship and start updating more often. Although it more probably means that I'll disappear for a while after posting so much in a day, hehe.

Anyways, as I told you I've been playing my fair share of poker lately; with some friends and online. It's good fun and I really like it but the online thing isn't really my cup of tea, it's not the same as playing against real people; online you always get the feeling that the computer somehow compensates a lot... and with my friends, well it's fun and all but there's only like 4 or 5 of us who play and to convince them all it's a bit tricky.

The good news is that I found out that there's a poker society at the university. I don't know exactly how often they play but it seems to be every week or every other week. Long story short, they had a tournament yesterday and I decided to go with a couple of my friends.

There was something special going on yesterday though. It wasn't a regular tournament where you buy your chips and then play until you either lose your chips or take everybody else's. Oh no, you could rebuy which made it more interesting. But the really interesting bit wasn't that you could rebuy but that you could rebuy unlimited times during the course of the 1st hour! And each time you rebought you could double rebuy which means you could rebuy double the amount of chips you bought at the beginning.

Entrance fee was placed at a very reasonable price of £1 which bought you 1000 chips. So, in the event that you lost them you could rebuy another 1000 chips or for £2, you could by 2000 (the aforementioned double rebuy). You can imagine what this scheme led to....yeah, complete and absolute madness and anarchy as the world has never seen before! Well not quite, but it was quite crazy out there. Everybody was going all-in (betting all their chips) without even looking at their cards knowing that they'd probably lose but they could alwas rebuy (or double rebuy). Of course the attractiveness of this approach lies in the fact that if you get lucky once when several people called your all-in bet then you'd end up with a monster pile of chips. Then again, you could probably lose that stack again quite quickly. One of these double-rebuying-jackasses was in my table and he decided to go all-in on almost any hand no matter what he had. As you might've already guessed he spent quite a few quid, 26 to be exact, and he ended up getting knocked out just right after the hour of rebuys was over.

When the rebuys ended the real poker started, if you had more than 1000 chips you could choose to add-on 1000 more for £1 and if you had no chips you could buy at most 2000 (£2) . When all was said and done there were £211 available as prize money. Taking into account that we were around 30 people, the average money invested per player was around £7 (or 3 double rebuys per person which is quite a lot).

At the end of all this carnage I managed to survive with almost 11k in chips (after having invested £4; 1000 initial chips + a double rebuy + 1000 add-on chips) ...safely above the average stack of 7k. Although there was a guy in my table with around 20k and another guy in another table had 30k at that point.

Now it was crunch time; you lose, you're out. The players were spread in 3 tables and the number of tables was going to be reduced as the players were knocked out. My 2 friends didn't make the cut from 3 tables to 2 and they had to call it a night. I on the other hand, was a bit luckier and made the 1st cut, where arounds 18 players were left. The number of players eventually boiled down to 10 and bingo! Final table came up, and I was still alive :D

I haven't mentioned how the prize money was going to be spread. 5 places were payed; 1st prize took around £60, 2nd took £50 and so on up to 5th place who took £20.

Whilst in the final table my stack was as high as 35k at one point when I won a huge pot with a pocket pair of aces but it was cut to around 18k when I raised a couple of times and someone went all-in on me and I had to fold my hand. Players were slowly getting knocked out and by the time 7 little piggies were left I was still counting myself amongst them.

Then, of course, came the demise...the blinds (which started at an innocent 25-50 level) were already at the 1500-3000 level and I happened to be in the big blind, ie, I had already committed 3000 chips + the ante which was 200. Everything was going alright, everybody was folding and shit 'til this guy raised it to 15k. This particular guy was in my 1st table (4 of the last 7 players were from my original table btw) and I had noticed that he was pretty tight, meaning that he usually only played when he had a legit hand, and I'd find out moments later that he
indeed had one. So the guy raised to 15k and everybody else folded which left only me tryting to defend my stupid big blind (remember I only had 18k at that point, which while a good stack on its own had me around 5th or 6th in the table at that point). I decided that 17% (3k) of my stack was well worth defending (I wouldn't have called if I wasn't on the blind, mind you) and although I pretty much knew this guy had a hand I felt I had to take a risk with my A 9 (I had folded A 4 twice in earlier hands) so I went all-in. He quickly called, since he only had to throw in an extra 3k, and showed a pair of Jacks, J J.

So it came down to that, a coin flip...he was probably the favorite to win but not by a lot (it was around 55% to 45% in his favor). I mean, I only needed the ace, right? Well it wasn't to be; the flop came 8 10 10, so far so shit, turn was another 8 which left me only with 3 outs, ie, the 3 A's left in the deck (and who knows, someone might have folded one) . River came and took all my chips with it, it was a fuckin' 9 which made me 3 pair! Make that 2 pair, 9's and 10's. My opponent's J's were enough to beat that and so I was out in 7th place, so close yet so so far from payday.

I can't help but think that if only had folded I might have cashed-in, but I guess if I was in the same situation again I'd probably play it exactly the same way.

All in all it wasn't a bad experience, it was my first tournament with more than 5 people and I made it to the final table and quite close to being in the money.

So watch out bitches coz here I come and I'm not plannin' on finishing 7th next time! Though, havin' said that, I'll probably finish 30th :S

Víctor

p.s. Stop touching yourself and leave a comment...