Saturday, April 11, 2009

Poker: SCOOP NL Hold'em event result

The last of the SCOOP events for me this time round is No Limit Hold'em which is the most familiar of the games, but also the one where you will generally need to get lucky somewhere along the line to do well in these huge field events....

As it turned out there was a massive 9657 player field which is  bit daunting.  You get 2500 chips to start and can have one re-buy then an add-on after one hour play.  

My basic strategy is to play really tight, then play any good hands strongly. but keep an eye on my relation to average stack as I don't want to fall too far behind the average

There is a mix of playing styles on my table, with a couple of loose players, a calling station and the rest seem pretty tight/solid

The early stages see me calling with reasonable hands and raising with great hands, but either way folding if I miss the flop.   I am not playing many hands so the chips are down to around 2200 when the calling station goes all in in early position.  It seems a bit weird move to win the blinds as they are so low.... anyone else I probably would have folded my AKo but thought it was likely I was ahead or 50-50 so called all-in.  No one else got involved and so it transpired I was up against 8-8   Luckily a K came and I doubled up so could go back into my shell and wait for the next big hand....

The calling station raised all-in a couple more times during the game, with 4-4 and 3-3 but was also raising a fair bit with any A as well as calling may of the other pots...l as he had already had his rebuy it seemed he was just an action junkie !

At the break I had 3890 chips and was 6523 out of 8026 players left (average was 5047 chips) so was a no-brainer to take the add-on.  When the session re-started I had 7390 chips against the 8001 average and had promoted myself to 4694th place with the add-on !

After the restart I got a couple of good hands and had worked my way to around 8000 chips when I got A-Qo on the button.   The calling station called but everyone else folded.   I put in a standard raise and the BB plus the calling station both called.    The flop came A-Q-2 (2 hearts) which was a great flop for me, but the BB player quickly went all in for around 6000 chips and the calling station called.   The BB all-in seemed a bit odd and I put him on a flush draw and he wanted to win the pot straight away, but the calling station was a bit trickier to read.   I thought his likeliest holding was A-2 (with his range it could even be just an A)  I did worry about trips but he had so far been all-in pre-flop with all his pocket pairs..... so I went all-in and got called.    As it turned out, the BB had the nut flush draw but the calling station had 2-2 so I was in poor shape, with 4 outs (16% chance)  The flush came for the BB on the turn which was irrelevant to me anyway, so went out in 4'694th after 90 minutes play

I was actually pretty happy with my play in this game as I had been steady and tight.  Although I was wrong in my read on the last hand, my reasoning was sound so percentage wise there was still a good chance I was going to be ahead.  Had I won the hand, I would have gone to 22'000 chips and had a good shot at making the money, so overall not to disappointed.  

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