Visions Of Sugar Plums Dancing In My Head

Since I recently moved out to Reno, I'm out here all by myself for the Holidays. So what is there for me to do on a Holiday night in a casino town?

After work last night, I headed to the Atlantis to play some cards. Since it was Christmas Eve, I really wasn't sure what expect. As it turns out, they had a decent crowd. There was eventually two tables of $3/$6 Limit and one $2/$3 NL. They were even taking sign ups for their Friday night tournament. It's a $120 20k chip "Deep Stack" tournament. I've been wanting to try this tournament, but I normally have to work on Saturday morning. So this was a good opportunity to try it out.

They usually get two or three tables on a normal Friday. But this week, we started with just seven players at "Shuffle Up & Deal", and ended up with nine participants. Since we started with 20k chips and blinds at 25/50, I figured the action would be slow in the beginning. I was wrong.

UTG limps. UTG+2 raises to 300. Four or five players call. I'm the BB, and look down at As Ad. I pop it to 1500. UTG cold calls, and UTG+2 also calls. This starts the cascade of "I've got Pot Odds now." Yeah, I didn't raise enough. I did want some action, but not five or six players seeing the Flop of 3d 2d 2h. Overall, not a bad Flop for me. I bet 5500. UTG gathers up his chips and goes All-In for around 18k. Everyone else folds. Since he's UTG and cold called preflop, I'm assuming that he's got a Mid Pair like TT or JJ. He may also have two big Diamonds, but I do have the Ad for a blocker and redraw. I make the call, and he shows KQd. The Turn and River are black. We count down the stacks, and I have him covered. I've now got 46k in the first level.

As we progressed, I tried to play small pot poker, and protect my chip stack. It worked well, as I maintained my chips stack over 40k for the next few levels. The next player I knocked out was with me raising preflop with AA, and getting one caller. The Flop was Q-high. I made a standard C-Bet, and he raised me to 5k. He has also knocked out a player and had a good chip stack, so I decided not to slowplay. I 3-Bet to 15k, and he just couldn't get away from KQo.

By the time we got to the first break (before the 400/800 Level), there was four player remaining. I had 91600 which was just over half of the chips in play (180k total). There was another Big Stack with around 50k, and the other two stack were just hanging around.

Four handed play last for quite a while, as the small stacks gained and lost chips. I stayed with my small pot strategy. By the time the 4th player was eliminated, I was still over 80k. But the other two players were around 50k, so my chip advantage as not as comfortable was it once was.

By now the blinds are starting to get silly, like 1k/2k/200 and 2k/4k/400. That's 7200 chips every orbit, which is just three hands in the 2k/4k/400 Level. Also, my card started to get silly. My starting hands were lousy, even for three handed. And when I had something, one of the others had something better. In a Blind vs Blind hand, I had Q5, and the River was a Q. I bet, and the other guy called with Q8. In another hand, I hit Trips on the Turn, made a bet of 5k, and got a caller. The River brought the Back Door Flush. He quickly bet 10k, so I made the crying call only to see his baby Flush.

After the Trips vs Flush hand, I had 32500, and had to start shoving All-In. Nobody called my first All-In, and I hung around the 25k-30k mark for a few orbits.

Eventually, I'm in the BB. The Button folds, and the SB says All-In. I peek at my cards, and see TT. It takes me about 0.00473 seconds to say Call. He's got a baby Ace, and missed his three outer. We have essentially swapped chip positions, as he is now the short stack.

Very next hand, he goes All-In on the Button. I'm the SB, look down at AJo, and shove All-In to isolate. The Button had Q8s, and completely missed the Board. He's eliminated in 3rd place.

The three of us already agreed to chop the $900 prize pool when it got to Heads-Up. We counted down the two remaining chip stacks, and they were very close. So we just chopped evenly, and I walked out of the Poker Room with $430 after giving a $20 tip.