A couple of times I’ve been on Full Tilt and seen Kenny Tran, one of their pros playing at the 5c/10c limit tables.  The first time I saw this, there was only a single table full at that limit and it had a waiting list of 36 people.   All the other tables were empty and I couldn’t find anyone to play a game with.

Why does someone want to play against a pro?  I know 100% that he’s way better than me and is totally going to take all my money.  Since my aim is to ultimately make money playing poker, why would I go against someone like that?  Doesn’t seem very sensible.

I tried to start a table, but I don’t feel very comfortable playing so shorthanded yet so I soon abandoned it.  I decamped to William Hill for half an hour or so but pretty soon that table evaporated and I ended up heads up and then left.

Yesterday, one of the Sit & Go’s I entered turned out to be actually a satellite to the Daily Dollar tournament.  I was just looking for the cheapest SnG I could find and didn’t actually pay attention to the prize pool.  Top two places got seats, so when we got down to the final three and one of them went AWOL, I just folded my way into second place.

I was doing fairly well in the early stages of the tournament – playing reasonably tight, stealing blinds when I could and knocking a few players out when I had the cards.  I was the chip leader at my table for the first couple of hours.   That changed when I lost half my stack.  I had ATs and flop came 38T giving me TPTK and a four flush.  A guy who limped in bet about half the pot and I raised him.  He went all in and I called.  He had AQ, and caught a queen on the river to take half my stack. 

After that I had a run of lousy cards and barely managed to stay even while others were knocking other players out and eating their chips.  It wasn’t too long until I was the short stack. On the plus side, my table image was fairly tight, so I was usually able to steal the blinds every now and then.  Once the antes kicked in I started bleeding chips fairly heavily and needed to do something.  Before I got into a position to do anything, the tables were rebalanced and I ended up at a completely different table.  The next hand was AJs and I went all in.  I was called by someone with 10x my chip stack who had ATo.  His T hit on the flop and I was gone in something like 1136th place.  I think there were about 9k entrants and the top 1080 places paid.

I’m not so sure I really like multi table tournaments much.  I played for over 3 hours and basically ended up with nothing.  Sure, it only cost me 30c, but that’s a rather large time investment for bugger all return.

I was a little bit bored last night, and logged onto a Razz play money table to see if I could figure out what was going on.  Razz is apparently a low-hand version of Stud.  While I’ve never played anything except Holdem, I think I managed to figure out the basics, tripling my play money in the process.

Of course, I can’t really use a play money table to gauge how I’m doing so I went looking for some real money Razz games I could play.  Wasn’t much at that time of day except an empty $1+20c Sit & Go, so I enrolled myself in that and waited a bit.  I was just about to unregister myself and go to bed when the table filled up! 

I managed to muddle through. I don’t really know how to calculate the odds of making a hand exactly, so was just working from gut feel mostly,  I bluffed a bit when I had something low showing but something not so great in the hole.  Seemed to work well enough to get me into the final two.  The chip leader and I swapped chips around for about 10 minutes until I eventually went all in with something like 357.  4th street was a 2, and he had 85 showing so I pushed and we ended up all in.  I caught a QKJ and he took the pot, leaving me in 2nd place with $2.40, double my buy in.

Obviously, a single Sit & Go doesn’t tell me anything about my ability/affinity for Razz, but I quite enjoyed it, and I think it’s something I’ll eventually come back to.   For now though, I think I’ll mostly stick with Holdem.

I was playing a couple of freerolls for my bankroll management Full Tilt Poker academy challenge and came across a freeroll for New Zealanders only.  There were 390 entrants, and even though I don’t really play No Limit, I entered anyway. 

I eventually went out in position 132 with this hand:

Full Tilt No-Limit Hold’em Tournament, 80/160 Blinds (8 handed) – Full-Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com
BB (t16750)
UTG (t12220)
UTG+1 (t6215)
MP1 (t6740)
MP2 (t8930)
Hero (CO) (t1910)
Button (t1880)
SB (t4405)
Hero’s M: 7.96
Preflop: Hero is CO with 10, A
UTG calls t160, 3 folds, Hero bets t480, 3 folds, UTG calls t320
Flop: (t1200) 3, Q, 10 (2 players)
UTG bets t2400, Hero calls t1430 (All-In)
Turn: (t4060) 6 (2 players, 1 all-in)
River: (t4060) K (2 players, 1 all-in)
Total pot: t4060
Results:
UTG had Q, 5 (one pair, Queens).
Hero had 10, A (one pair, tens).
Outcome: UTG won t4060

I guess I should’ve just folded when he raised me all in after the flop, but oh well.  Next time.