It has been a long long time since I sat down at a tourney with the one hundred percent intention of staying focused. My past few forays have been eighty percent at best - as I have taken quite a leisurely approach to tournament poker (treating it as my personal day off from the professional poker grind...to play something that was not always poker on a tournament poker table)...
It helped greatly that I was playing at a room whose denizens are not as familiar with me. No one was trying to catch my attention every few minutes for random advice and questions. There was no in-room crises that needed my help to resolve. I did not need to have a say in the structure or the prize pool or the ramifications of finishing in the bubble positions without negotiating insurance...
Also, as I was here to play my best, I was not about to spiral into my usual tourney-experimentations. I would be able to resist asking the age old question: "I wonder what would happen if I pop this balloon...?"
Translated, that reads: "I wonder if I can 3bet with this nine-four-offsuit and use my position to fire two more barrels and take down a huge pot uncontested?"
It helped that I had a long long day before tourney day, so I was a tad grumpy and not in the mood for the usual idle chit chat that inevitably leads me to call down a good friend with my doomed TPNK of a hand.
I was also not in the mood for my random social experiments - like the time I pretended to be drunk to see if I would get more calls... or the time I played all my BU and CO hands by pretending to look at my hole cards but never really seeing them... or the time I decided I would play with only one guy at the table, and it would always be to raise him... or the time I made all my preflop raises 1/3 of my stack - regardless of the blinds and my stack size - and staring people down after i raised it to 4,500 with my 13k stack and the blinds at 25-50...
I turned off my phone and put my earphones on.
This time I was just lotus-seated on my chair and listened to myself breathe. I was able to do what I love to do best: I watched other players play - and I saw some plays that made me believe in the Pinoy Poker Pro all over again!
You must understand: with all the freerollers, tiltwhores, fancy players, egomaniacs, luckboxes, anglers, cheats, charmers, nits, and flat-out-donkeys out there I take great GREAT pleasure in seeing a player really do the game justice.
Here is one of my favorite plays of the day:
BERNARD GARROVILLAS. This player is known for fearless aggression and a talent for outplaying his opponents with a wide array of uncallable bets. He can build a stack and lose it in one orbit. He is not crazy, but he is not always patient. On this day, I saw Bernard the Pro (as opposed to Bernard-the-guy-who-is-gonna-hit-the-Baccarat-tables-after-the-game) in action.
With a limper in the CO, Bernard raises from the BU. A call after the blinds fold, and the limper check-calls Bernard's cbet on a ragged flop. On the brickish turn, another check from the CO. Bernard checks behind. The river pairs the turn - I recall it was a three - and the CO bets about half the pot. Bernard flats and his Jacks beat the Villain's MPWK hand.
This may seem pretty standard, but I do not see it enough, and I really liked this hand because of the basics involved:
1. Tourney Poker versus Cash Poker basics: In a cash game, the chips you do not lose have the same value as the chips you win. In a tourney, the chips you win actually have less value than the chips you do not lose. If you have 5,000 chips for example, the four thousand you win (getting you a total of 9,000) are hardly as important as the four thousand you lose (crippling your stack to 1,000 and further crippling all your hopes and dreams). Bernard had a hand he could easily bet for value if he played at his usual speed, but he controlled the pot to fit the size of his hand - which is to say, he recognized that his hand was no monster. It was just an overpair.
2. When to bet: If a weaker hand will just fold and give you zero extra profit, why bet? I don't buy all the hype about "Protecting my hand" and "Seeing where I am" in a ragged-board situation. If Bernard bets the turn, he folds out his opponent. He checks behind and actually gets the poor guy to "bet to win" - which is, in my opinion, one of the most overused plays/expressions... Bernard knew when to bet, and he knew when to let the clueless guy do the betting.
3. Image-Crafting! Not only did Bernard advertise that he can check with a good hand, he also advertised that his opponent was not one to be feared. I remember being asked after the tourney why I went into triple-flat-call mode IP with my KK overpair, and I explained that besides not wanting to lose my customer, I take great pleasure in watching them be the first to table their awful hands at the showdown... and I take greater pleasure in watching the rest of the table take note and lose all respect for my opponent for the next two hours. With one disciplined call, you can give up a few extra chips for the sake of image-crafting: improving yours, and damaging theirs.
And now my favorite hand of the day...
MICKEY TAVORA. I had the awful luck of drawing a seat OOP from Mickey. I was not OOP in the right-next-to-me sense either, I was OOP in the worst way: Mickey was in one of my "money-seats"...
My money-seats are the two immediately to my right, and the ones that are second and third to my left. These seats are where I need the fish to be, but instead Mickey was on the seat third to my left. This meant I was not going to be able to routinely and profitably raise my HiJack and CO because Mickey can defend his blinds very well. As for my BU (the only other time I would be able to act last against him), Mickey neutralized me by routinely limping or raising from UTG.
To make things absolutely worse, the fishiest player was on Mickey's left - which meant that every single time I went after the guy, Mickey could cockblock and take away my advantages.
Not having much room, I sat back and watched Mickey tear up the table like he was wildly swinging a vacuum cleaner hose and sucking chips into his stack...
My favorite Mickey play came at the expense of a LAGtard second to my right. The LT had been moved to the table with about 60k in chips at a time when people generally only had 20k. He sat down and immediately raised his first three hands.
I remember thinking: "I will bet anyone willing to put money down that this guy and his 60k stack will be gone before I'm done counting out my own puny stack of 5,800"
Mickey took care of him in this hand:
With the blinds at 300-600, Mickey raises to 2,200 from MP. It is folded around to the LT in the BB, who flats. Pot is 4700.
On a 2-2-7 rainbow flop, the LT checks and Mickey fires a bet of 3,000. The LT check-raises to 8,000 total... and he looks so smug it makes me pray a rosary on the spot: "Please don't fold Mickey!"
With the pot bloated to 15,700 on a horrid board early in the tourney, Mickey tanks. Tournaments are defined by moments like these - many have gone broke by ego-shoving over the top, and many have lost sleep by folding and begging to know what the other guy had.
Mickey 3bets to 22,300 total! The pot is now 35k, and if the LT calls, he will only have about 28k left. If the LT shoves, well Mickey (who has the LT covered by about 5k) will have to call 28k for a pot of over 85k! All this, with two cards to go.
The defining moment: The LT flat-calls!
The turn comes - an ACE - and the LT insta-shoves. Then he displays about six of the tells that I have carefully noted during my last hour with him. My mind is screaming CALL!
But Mickey did not need any tells. Everything he needed to know, he found out for himself with that brilliant Flop 3bet. Mickey calls, and the LAGtard tables KQo before staring at a blank river and literally running out of the room before anyone recognizes him and asks about his brilliant turn instashove...
I loved this hand for these reasons:
1. Fish-Isolation! Mickey saw the LT in the Big Blind and raised to get into a hand with him while he had position. It did not matter that he was raising from MP, he was running the table, and he got what he wanted.
2. Mickey's Flop 3bet!!! The Flop check-raise was almost scripted - you could almost hear the LT say "check-raise blind" after he called preflop! Mickey did not lose his nerve, but he also gave the move the respect it deserved. He could be running into something that had him beat - like Nines or Tens, or even some classic Big Blind Special with a Two in it! Folding would have been awful though, because he played this hand to get the LT's money into the middle. He had what he wanted, but he needed to make sure he actually had the LT beat. The 3bet was a great size - significant enough to fold out most bluffs, but also a size that he could give up on if the 4bet-shove came. Given the size of the pot after the 3bet, any serious hand would surely 4bet-shove already...
3. "You flat this and you are mine!" If Mickey flats the check-raise, the LT shoves any turn and it would be impossible to call with anything other than the nuts. Mickey's hand was nowhere near nutty. It was fruity at best. So he 3bets, and as soon as the LT flat-called, Mickey maneuvered back into the driver's seat. He could check the turn behind - as the LT would SURELY check the turn if he had any kind of a hand. The LT was painted into a corner where no turn lead out would make sense after he passed on his chance to 4bet on the flop...
So the LT Donk shoves the turn, and for all intents and purposes, it was as if he had played his hand face-up to reveal the nothing that it was!
Never mind what hand Mickey had, because what he had was the balls to make the right move (a move that I am sure many could easily come up with, but could almost never pull the trigger on). And now he had over 100k... and I still had about 6k.
Damn.
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