Poker: SCOOP-07 (low stakes) report

My reduced schedule for Pokerstars SCOOP finally started today, with the No Limit Hold’em Heads Up game

My luck started out well, when at the 2nd attempt to win my seat in a 10 seater freeroll (well it actually cost me 150 FPP, which I don’t use for anything else) I managed to win the STT and therefore win my seat in the Low Stakes SCOOP-07 event, effectively for nothing

It started at 7pm UK time,  with 10’695 entrants !   With the $15+1.5 entry fee,  this gives $160’000 prize fund, of which £21’000 is for the winner.    1’024 get paid.

The structure is to start with 5000 chips and 50/25 blinds, which increase every 5 mins, so quite a deep stack HU tournament.

At first I wasn’t sure what was happening as I didn't have an opponent to play on my table, then it became clear that I had a bye to the 2nd round in order to get the number of players to a power of 2 (8192)  Nice start to the tournament.

Only problem is that I end up waiting until gone 8pm before I actually got to play in round 2!   First hand my opponent nearly times out… then he sits out for 10 hands,  then seems to be very slow to respond…. great !!   Eventually it all settled down, and I managed to run good and overcome my opponent in around 25 mins of play… now just got to sit and wait until we’re down to 4096 players for round 3 to start

At last round 3 starts at 9:07pm.   Definitely a pain having to wait so long between rounds!!   This time, I get a very aggro opponent and it’s all over in 3 hands…  and I’m though to round 4 already Got to watch most of The Apprentice whilst waiting, another result

Round 4 starts at 10:06pm and if I can get through this match, then I’m in the money!   All is going pretty good, although is a tough match.   Then a key hand occurs when I get A-A in BB and raise after the villain completes the button, but he calls.   The flop of 9-5-2 looks fairly safe (but the villain will have a wide range here) so with 2 diamonds on the board decide to lead out and get called.   The 8d isn’t a great card, but with 1900 in the pot and the villain only with 2100 left, we’re likely to get all-in one way or another, but would rather see the river first so check.   The villain bets half his stack, so it’s going all-in and I shove and sure enough he calls and shows Ad4c making me 70% to win the hand and the match…. sadly the Jd river ruins my night and I’m down to 3750 chips.   After that I stay focussed but find myself dribbling my stack away and with the blinds increasing every 5 mins, inevitably I am down to 12 BB and have to shove/fold.  After a couple of hands my T-2 shove gets called by Q-J and it’s all over.

Officially I’m out in 1162nd place.

A little disappointing end to what was looking like a reasonable session, but can’t be too unhappy as it was a free shot and felt I played pretty well overall.