Poker on the edge

I played in the Delta Gold poker tournament today at the Gold Strike. There were 96 runners, the buy-in was $340, the levels were 40 minutes each and we started with $10,000 in chips -- excellent.

I lasted until Level 9 (30 players left), although my chip stack was never as much as twice what I started with -- life on the edge. I was able to steal when nobody wanted a pot and survive mostly by picking my spots.

I busted out when it folded to a fairly big stack in the cutoff seat. He limped in and the button and small blind folded. The blinds were 800/1600/200. I held: ♠J ♠10, so raised another 4500. My stack was around 16K which means my M was around 5. With that, you're supposed to shove, but I thought that might look suspicious. By making a normal raise, my thinking is that if he had only a limp-type hand, he wouldn't be able to call it. If he did call it, I'd try and take away a bigger pot on the flop. He called!

The flop was good for me: ♥10 ♠7 ♣6. I moved in and he called and turned over: ♠9 ♠8 for a flopped straight. The turn was ♣8 giving me outs -- a 9 would give me a higher straight. That only happens on TV, though. Even though it cost me my chips, I thought my move was reasonable.

"I had no business being in that pot," said the villain, "but I was frustrated."

I'm glad he was frustrated -- I needed those chips -- but it wasn't to be.

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A lady was moved to our table. "Are you a nice table or a crazy table?" she asked. By crazy table she meant a lot of raising and bluffing. What does this tell you about her? People would do better if they didn't say anything, actually. You can tell a lot by what people say, but also by how they say it. Are they educated? Do they sound timid? Etc. etc.

The tightest player at the table did this twice: He raised before the flop and got one caller. The flop was 10-high and instead of making a normal continuation bet, he moved all in. After the other player folded, he showed K-K.

Hands like that don't come along that often, and you have to get what you can out of them. What's wrong with making a normal CB by betting two-thirds of the pot? I guess he was happy an ace hadn't come on the flop. In a tournament, you have to build your stack, however, not win a pot. You're trying to win the event! Instead he blew his opponent out of the water.

Next Saturday, I plan to try again. GL me.





Images by MOJO and taken with my P&S.