The Begining of The End
My exams start tomorrow! 6 consecutive mornings and I'm done!
I'm feeling fairly upbeat. It's definitely going to be a gamble (!!) as to what questions come up, but hopefully I've just about squeezed in enough revision to see me through.
Talk about bad timing, though: this weekend there is a huge poker marathon organised by the University Poker Society. Today there is an all-day No-Limit Texas Holdem tournament. There are about 150 players and of those about 20 are pros that have been invited. With £20 entry fee, unlimited re-buys and a top-up for the first two hours of play the prize pool should be pretty tasty. The winner is certainly looking at taking away a few grand and I believe there's a garunteed grand for the highest finishing student. It would have been an amazing expierience, but even I managed to show a little self restrain in not entering (well actually that's a lie, I entered and then decided that I was being rediculously stupid and managed to sell my seat to someone else!).
Yesterday there were smaller events going on all day. There was a dealers choice freeroll (who ever is dealing chooses the type of poker played for that round) followed by heads-up (one-on-one) inter-university matches (about five or six other universitys have shown up for the weekend) and then, in the evening, there was a smallish No-Limit Holdem tournament with £10 buy-in with one rebuy/top-up.
You may have noticed that the restraint I showed was only "little" in size: Well, I couldn't have gone all weekend without playing at least once, now could I?!! After a day of battling with revision of G Protein-Linked Receptors, Receptor Tyrosine Kinases and the like, I'd pretty much reached the end of my teather, and really the only thing for it was to play some poker! I'd popped in in the afternoon to see if I could grab a couple of hours at a cash game, but everone was engrossed in the heads-up matches so I decided to register for the tourney in the evening. It was going to be my first live tournament, and even then I haven't had much practice at online tournaments, so it was going to be a steep learning curve. Still, I'd give it my best shot.
There were about 50 entrants and assuming that the majority would either rebuy or top-up, there was a nice sized prize pool. The top six places were going to be paid. First place would receive £300, 2nd about £170 down to £20 for 6th place. I figured that if I got knocked out early then there would be some cash games going on that I could join in with.
At my table, amongst others, there were a couple of completely indeceipherbale Glaswegens (check out my spelling!) and a guy from Cambridge who looked as if he knew what he was doing, verging on slightly arrogant (but maybe I just look for any excuse to think badly of a Tab!). I started off playing pretty tight and just trying to sus everyone else out. The Glawegian to my left seemed to playing a lot of hands, but was doing pretty well for it. The arrogant Tab, had his aces cracked early on when the Glasweigian hit two-pair with J2. All I needed to do was get some good cards and I could take a few of them on. After about 45 minutes of pretty cold cards and the blinds having taken a sizable nibble at my stack, I finally got AA, my first really strong hand, but due to how tight I'd been playing my pre-flop raise picked up only the blinds.
I made it to the first break with about half of my chips left (eveyone started with 2000) and I took the opportunity of the top-up (another 2000 chips for £10) to give my self that little bit extra of a chance.
Soon after the break our table got split and we were redistributed to seats on other tables now vacated by the first few casualties of the evening. I was pretty gald about this since the Glaswegian, who I was now calling Greg (the only name that sounded vagurely like what he said everytime I asked him to repeat it!) had an enormous stack and the guy to his left - a very excentric, more than slightly irritating half-greek guy from St. Andrew's in Scotland - also had pleanty of chips. We were now down to just 3 tables (about 25 people), but the blinds were increasing and rapidly gobbling up my chips. Sooner or later, despite the crap that I was being delt I was going to have to make a few moves. I'd picked up a few small pots along the way, but really nothing to write home about.
Things were looking pretty grim and I was down to only two 500 chips (the average at this point was proably about 10 times that ammount) But somehow I managed the most miraculous of combacks. I doubled up once with 77 against over cards and then again with KTs in the big blind, but this wasn't going to be enought to save my bacon. My real turn of luck came when I went all-in again with A4 (the blinds had just gone up again and they had nearly reached me) I got two-callers which is never a good sign and I resigned myself to an early shower. The flop came A J 2 all hearts, which meant that currently there was a small chance that I had the best hand, but I didn't have a heart so things were really not looking good. The turn brought a 4 which gave me two-pair and proably the best hand, all I had to hope for was that the river wouldn't bring a heart. The other two players both checked, the dealer burnt the top card and then came the river, it was a heart - my hopes had been raised by the turn card only to be crushed by the river, but wait..... what was that...... it was the 4 of hearts, I'd got a full house! What a way to tripple up!
That wasn't the end of it by any means, I doubled up a few hands later with TT and was now sitting with a cool 22,000 - well above average. The final table was well in sight and it duly came: after playing for another 30 mins or so we were down to the final 8. Only two more people to be eliminated before me and I would be in the money!
My stack was slightly bellow average and the blinds were going up fast cos we were running out of time - so I was going to have to watch how I went. Fortuantely most of the big stacks were to my right (including the irritating excentric Greek-Scotsman) so I would have to be betting into them. Greg was to my left again, but his stack was much less intimidating: apparently his AK had run into QQ and failed to improve. By this stage I'd also figured out that even though I couldn't decipher what he said his name was that it sounded a bit like Gregor and he answered to Greg, so that was quite useful, although it didn't prevent me from having to ask him to repeat everything he said!
The 8th place went out not long into the final session so I only had to outlive one more person. My stack was dwindling, however, and it was definately going to be a close call and, again, I was getting dealt rubish. But all I needed was for seomone to go all-in, get called and get beat - that's all it was going to take. Surely that was going to be possible? And sure, enough people were going all-in and getting called, but every time their cards held up and they lived to fight another day. The other short stack doubled up a couple of times and it was really looking very unlikely that there was going to be anyway of my surviving. I had only enought to post one more big blind so it was going to a case of playing one of the next 6 or 7 hands. My mistake was proably decideing not to play KT, because before I knew it the big blind was apon me and I had to go all in with A6. Some guy re-raised me and I knew I was in trouble. No-one called his raise so it was just the two of us - show down time. I flip over my A6 and when I see his KK I know I'm a gonna. Only three cards left in the pack that can save me. Needless to say none of them came.
The bubble (highest finisher not to be paid) really has got to be the most gutting place to finish. So so close to the money and yet you might just as well have been knocked out first, at least that way you could have played in a cash game and made some money that way. But all in all, I was really happy with the way things had gone. 7th out of 50 in my first tournament can't be bad and from a quick inspection of the cash games and the size of the bets flying around, I was pretty relieved that I hadn't gone out of the tournament early enough to sit down with them!
Jeeez, what an epic! I'd really better be getting back to my membrane proteins, for my exam tomorrow: "The Structue and Function of Macromolecules" Yummy!
I'm feeling fairly upbeat. It's definitely going to be a gamble (!!) as to what questions come up, but hopefully I've just about squeezed in enough revision to see me through.
Talk about bad timing, though: this weekend there is a huge poker marathon organised by the University Poker Society. Today there is an all-day No-Limit Texas Holdem tournament. There are about 150 players and of those about 20 are pros that have been invited. With £20 entry fee, unlimited re-buys and a top-up for the first two hours of play the prize pool should be pretty tasty. The winner is certainly looking at taking away a few grand and I believe there's a garunteed grand for the highest finishing student. It would have been an amazing expierience, but even I managed to show a little self restrain in not entering (well actually that's a lie, I entered and then decided that I was being rediculously stupid and managed to sell my seat to someone else!).
Yesterday there were smaller events going on all day. There was a dealers choice freeroll (who ever is dealing chooses the type of poker played for that round) followed by heads-up (one-on-one) inter-university matches (about five or six other universitys have shown up for the weekend) and then, in the evening, there was a smallish No-Limit Holdem tournament with £10 buy-in with one rebuy/top-up.
You may have noticed that the restraint I showed was only "little" in size: Well, I couldn't have gone all weekend without playing at least once, now could I?!! After a day of battling with revision of G Protein-Linked Receptors, Receptor Tyrosine Kinases and the like, I'd pretty much reached the end of my teather, and really the only thing for it was to play some poker! I'd popped in in the afternoon to see if I could grab a couple of hours at a cash game, but everone was engrossed in the heads-up matches so I decided to register for the tourney in the evening. It was going to be my first live tournament, and even then I haven't had much practice at online tournaments, so it was going to be a steep learning curve. Still, I'd give it my best shot.
There were about 50 entrants and assuming that the majority would either rebuy or top-up, there was a nice sized prize pool. The top six places were going to be paid. First place would receive £300, 2nd about £170 down to £20 for 6th place. I figured that if I got knocked out early then there would be some cash games going on that I could join in with.
At my table, amongst others, there were a couple of completely indeceipherbale Glaswegens (check out my spelling!) and a guy from Cambridge who looked as if he knew what he was doing, verging on slightly arrogant (but maybe I just look for any excuse to think badly of a Tab!). I started off playing pretty tight and just trying to sus everyone else out. The Glawegian to my left seemed to playing a lot of hands, but was doing pretty well for it. The arrogant Tab, had his aces cracked early on when the Glasweigian hit two-pair with J2. All I needed to do was get some good cards and I could take a few of them on. After about 45 minutes of pretty cold cards and the blinds having taken a sizable nibble at my stack, I finally got AA, my first really strong hand, but due to how tight I'd been playing my pre-flop raise picked up only the blinds.
I made it to the first break with about half of my chips left (eveyone started with 2000) and I took the opportunity of the top-up (another 2000 chips for £10) to give my self that little bit extra of a chance.
Soon after the break our table got split and we were redistributed to seats on other tables now vacated by the first few casualties of the evening. I was pretty gald about this since the Glaswegian, who I was now calling Greg (the only name that sounded vagurely like what he said everytime I asked him to repeat it!) had an enormous stack and the guy to his left - a very excentric, more than slightly irritating half-greek guy from St. Andrew's in Scotland - also had pleanty of chips. We were now down to just 3 tables (about 25 people), but the blinds were increasing and rapidly gobbling up my chips. Sooner or later, despite the crap that I was being delt I was going to have to make a few moves. I'd picked up a few small pots along the way, but really nothing to write home about.
Things were looking pretty grim and I was down to only two 500 chips (the average at this point was proably about 10 times that ammount) But somehow I managed the most miraculous of combacks. I doubled up once with 77 against over cards and then again with KTs in the big blind, but this wasn't going to be enought to save my bacon. My real turn of luck came when I went all-in again with A4 (the blinds had just gone up again and they had nearly reached me) I got two-callers which is never a good sign and I resigned myself to an early shower. The flop came A J 2 all hearts, which meant that currently there was a small chance that I had the best hand, but I didn't have a heart so things were really not looking good. The turn brought a 4 which gave me two-pair and proably the best hand, all I had to hope for was that the river wouldn't bring a heart. The other two players both checked, the dealer burnt the top card and then came the river, it was a heart - my hopes had been raised by the turn card only to be crushed by the river, but wait..... what was that...... it was the 4 of hearts, I'd got a full house! What a way to tripple up!
That wasn't the end of it by any means, I doubled up a few hands later with TT and was now sitting with a cool 22,000 - well above average. The final table was well in sight and it duly came: after playing for another 30 mins or so we were down to the final 8. Only two more people to be eliminated before me and I would be in the money!
My stack was slightly bellow average and the blinds were going up fast cos we were running out of time - so I was going to have to watch how I went. Fortuantely most of the big stacks were to my right (including the irritating excentric Greek-Scotsman) so I would have to be betting into them. Greg was to my left again, but his stack was much less intimidating: apparently his AK had run into QQ and failed to improve. By this stage I'd also figured out that even though I couldn't decipher what he said his name was that it sounded a bit like Gregor and he answered to Greg, so that was quite useful, although it didn't prevent me from having to ask him to repeat everything he said!
The 8th place went out not long into the final session so I only had to outlive one more person. My stack was dwindling, however, and it was definately going to be a close call and, again, I was getting dealt rubish. But all I needed was for seomone to go all-in, get called and get beat - that's all it was going to take. Surely that was going to be possible? And sure, enough people were going all-in and getting called, but every time their cards held up and they lived to fight another day. The other short stack doubled up a couple of times and it was really looking very unlikely that there was going to be anyway of my surviving. I had only enought to post one more big blind so it was going to a case of playing one of the next 6 or 7 hands. My mistake was proably decideing not to play KT, because before I knew it the big blind was apon me and I had to go all in with A6. Some guy re-raised me and I knew I was in trouble. No-one called his raise so it was just the two of us - show down time. I flip over my A6 and when I see his KK I know I'm a gonna. Only three cards left in the pack that can save me. Needless to say none of them came.
The bubble (highest finisher not to be paid) really has got to be the most gutting place to finish. So so close to the money and yet you might just as well have been knocked out first, at least that way you could have played in a cash game and made some money that way. But all in all, I was really happy with the way things had gone. 7th out of 50 in my first tournament can't be bad and from a quick inspection of the cash games and the size of the bets flying around, I was pretty relieved that I hadn't gone out of the tournament early enough to sit down with them!
Jeeez, what an epic! I'd really better be getting back to my membrane proteins, for my exam tomorrow: "The Structue and Function of Macromolecules" Yummy!
posted by Pinky @ 2:45 PM
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