HGPA February Invitational
Friday night was this month’s HGPA tournament. To make a long story short, I had a great time over the course of nine and a half hours, and made it into the money. We had two tables worth of people initially, and once elimination play got us down to one table a lively cash game appeared to break out in “loser’s lounge”. I utterly dominated my initial table, taking almost all of their money into the merged single table, but I cracked at the end during three-way play.
I probably should have been able to take the top spot, but a combination of three things broke me down: 1) I need more practice at 3-way Hold ‘Em, 2) I got rivered, against significant odds, on a particularly large hand, and 3) at around 2:30AM I started to get a bit mentally sloppy. I may chat a bit about a couple of these hands at the end of this, just to play with the CardConverter plugin that I got after seeing Roach make a card plugin look so good–although he’s clearly using a different plugin than I am. (He’s using the War Room plugin, which renders cards as images, and I wanted to avoid doing that for RSS readability…)
The winner this time, as at each of the last 5 or 6 tournaments, was someone who had never previously won. And now his name, or rather his poker nickname, adorns the trophy.
Oh, yeah, we have a trophy for tournaments. It looks like this:
Each tournament winner gets their chosen moniker (or at least, as much of it as can fit on one line!) engraved on a dated shield that is added to the trophy.
Here you can see the last four winners, including Friday’s:
As you can see we get a variety of different naming styles chosen, from full proper name, to Neil’s special initial + title form, through to this week’s “just the nickname” style.
For the record, the girl at the engraving shop thinks “Speedbag” is something dirty, not a boxer’s training tool. This is one of those situations where you have to just let it go, because arguing the point just makes things worse.
As for why getting the engraving was my problem? Well, there’s a certain division of labour among the HGPA guys. Drake is our roper, who gets the bums in the seats, as it were, for both regular weekly games (which he typically hosts) and tournaments. Neil, at least for the last couple of tourneys, has been our host, and has provided space, music, entertainment for the loser’s lounge, a second table (when needed), and chips for the second table (when needed). I provide my own snazzy chips, and a bit of tournament organization: setting up initial chip counts, blind schedules, payout levels, managing the $$, etc. I also handle the trophy, and I typically provide some fun bonus prizes.
Bonus prizes, you ask?
Yeah, I usually bring a few prizes: something for the first person to bust out, something for the first person to take someone out, and a little something extra for the tournament winner (to go with the cash). For example, this month I had a first bust out prize made up of:
[At this point for some reason WordPress ate the rest of this entry, and I have had to try to reconstruct it from memory. This version will doubtless be somewhat different from what I wrote before.]
- Annie Duke’s “How To Play With The Big Boys” DVD
- a can of general purpose lubricant
- a bag of hand warmers
In the past the “first bust out” prizes have included such things as: a St. Jude medallion, a deck of Barbie playing cards, a copy of Poker For Dummies, an “I’m The Fish” cup, a dunce cap, consolation booze, etc.
(I’m always looking for suggestions for funny prizes in this category.)
The “first to take someone out” prize has been, at different times, the Sharpshooter prize (which came with a classy set of old school cap guns), the Poker Hero prize (with Adam West Batman DVD), etc.
And this month’s winner got, in addition to half the money, a bottle of Pommery POP Pink Champagne. (I tried some of that–it wasn’t worth the cost, fyi.)
Since I was the first to bust someone out, I got one of my own prizes, but as J-rod busted someone out at the other table nigh simultaneously, I passed the prize on to him.
And what about those hands that cost me the top place?
All right. The final three players were, in order around the table: Bob, Speedbag, and me.
On the hand where mathematics failed me I was
Now, I know Bob, and I read him as playing position for the blinds. He wouldn’t do it without something, so he’s probably paired one of the rags and is holding an overcard. I put him on
Speedbag folds. I chew it over for a bit, look at Bob’s stack (which is about half the size of mine) and decided to call him. It’s not a confident call, but I make it.
I can tell immediately that I was right, and that Bob isn’t happy about being called. He flips up
The river comes up
I’m pretty sure I didn’t play that wrong.
The other hand was definitely played wrong, but I’m putting some of the blame for that on fatigue.
This time Speedbag is BB, and I have
Flop comes up
The turn comes up
The river comes
Speedbag comes in with another smallish bet, and I think about coming back all-in (since I think I have the nuts). I decide that might scare him, so I might as well try to build the pot. I come back with a large, but not all-in raise. He calls.
I confidently show my ace flush, and he shows his
Damn that was dumb. All the signs were there–I even put him on that hand early on, and then failed to notice that he would have improved to the boat. That’s a beginner’s mistake: playing only my own cards, and not my opponent’s. Sigh. Oh well, I’m getting old (hell, I turn 33 on Friday) and I’m not used to being up until 3AM anymore, much less to being alert at that time.
Still, I had a real blast all-in-all, and still came out with enough prize cash to cover the prizes I brought, my dinner, and my drinks. And I got more time in the endgame, which means more practice at the weakest part of my tournament skills. So, a pretty good Friday, all things considered.
Lachlan O’Dea
Someone with a Voice
Trish
Richard B.
February 28th, 2006 at 12:12 pm
I assume you’ll be adding layers upon layers to the trophy as the need arises? I like your card plugin better than mine for 2 reasons – you can describe cards without assigning a suit plus you can use the ‘X’ for a card not remembered. I think I’ll make the switch or customize the plugin I have. Not sure which yet. I have an idea for your parting gifts: Some combination of a ‘broom’ and some ‘corn’. Heh heh heh. Although 1st man out usually doesn’t go because he’s been blinded out. How about a deck of cards that the faces can be seen both ways. That way he should be able to read what everybody has next time.
You mentioned you have some weakness in 3 man and I find I am weaker there than I am going heads up. For me, I think it’s because when I have the button, I’m too tempted to fold the hand because it seems like a free fold and maybe, just maybe there’ll be a knock-out between the blinds. I also think it’s tougher to steal since it looks so ‘obvious’ that this is the case. So I second guess my marginal hands. By that time it’s too late to play the hand because you may have tipped off the other two.
I’ll just throw this question out to you: why not raise the A2s pre-flop? My thinking in that situation would be that a raise was in order here for 3 reasons:
1) Pick up the pot without seeing a flop
2) If that didn’t work, at least flush out SB. A2s is a tough hand to go up against 2 other players.
3) Get information
You had no problems solving 3) in this case anyway without raise (since you correctly put him on a small pair/set). Even with your strong post-play skills, a raise could have benefitted you by changing the proceeding structure of the betting. Still, I loved your re-raises on the flop and turn. You were justified in many ways there. Your raise preflop may (but very slight I think in this case) have bought you a free card or given you a chance to start the betting in the round. In the end I think there’s no way you could have gotten him off his cards and NOT seen a river in that hand so the point is moot. You’re right, you should have probably shut down the betting on the river and saved some chips. Since you didn’t go all-in however you still must have left yourself a stack that could still be usable no?
February 28th, 2006 at 12:33 pm
Yeah, my understanding is that you just buy another slightly larger base and it screws on, repeat ad infinitum as required. I guess we’ll find out around May
(I just noticed, looking at those pictures that the most recent one is dated 2004. Oops. I can see how that happened, since the other dates are 02-04, but still… And the engraving girl didn’t comment on that either. Weird.)
I’ll think about the pre-flop raise there. It’s not my normal move with that hand, but it might be justified in 3-way play.