Jeffrey | Poker Articles, Poker Tournament

Submitted by Dungbeetle, this article belongs to the Poker Tournament series.

 An amusing tournament write up from a tournament played at the Dusk Till Dawn poker club’s monthly poker festival in Nottingham, UK. I especially liked the last part of Dungbeetles recollection where he sets up a trap for the table bully, only to find….I won’t spoil it for you keep reading and you will know why this post made me laugh inside when I read it.

Myself, The Baron, Dev, Fluke, Jalfont and Volcano all made our way up to Nottingham this weekend, to play the Dusk Till Dawn monthly festival. After a fairly heavy Friday night plus some gokarting, we made our way over to the venue.

And what a venue it is – if ever there was an example of how to run a poker club this was it. Efficient, friendly, spacious, good structures and a great spread of cash games. It’s pretty much the best place I have played outside of Vegas. In fact, it’s only real negative is that it is almost too popular, as at one point on Saturday the lists for the cash games were closed due to sheer volume of players.

Myself and Jalfont ponied up £330 to enter the deepstack 50k guaranteed, with 10k in starting chips and a 45 minute clock. I think there were about 300 runners (so the guarantee was easily surpassed), and here is how it panned out for me:

LEVEL 1
The table is relatively passive pre-flop, so I play a lot of hands in position, and take pots away from the checkers, generally on the turn. I am up to about 11,500 using this strategy, and feeling pretty good about building a good stack. I didn’t really play any big pots, just a lot of 300 wins came my way.

LEVEL 2
An alternate arrives at my table, after someone made a pigs breakfast of a flopped 2 pair, managing to stack himself. The alternate is an older gentleman, but plays completely unlike the older player passive stereotype. In short he is a bully, making huge overbets/overraises on the flop/turn/river, several times getting younger opponents to lay down fairly big hands (overpairs etc). His style is working, but I quickly target him as a player to trap with a big hand at some stage.

My stack actually dwindles down to 9k in this level, as I get a bit out of line against two solid players, and burn away a few chips splashing around.

Interesting hand:

Small blind completes and I check my option with 33
Flop arrives 3, 3, J ………..oh brother!
Small blind leads for 100 into a 200 pot, I flat call.
Turn is a blank, and SB checks, as do I.
River is another brick and SB leads for 100.
I figure I can do a small raise and might get paid, but hope to pretend to make a cock up of the betting my doing a ludicrous raise. I say “raise” and reach for chips without looking down, and bang three thousand denomination chips in. This is a huge overbet, and I try to look nervous as if I’ve done it by mistake. Alas, he doesn’t fall for it (or had nothing) and folds. Flopped quads, and only a 500 pot

LEVEL 3
I find AA under the gun, and raise it up to 500 (blinds are 75-150). Bully old guy above calls and is my only customer.

Flop arrives: Q, 8, 8

I lead for 1k and Bully calls.

Turn is: 8 giving me full house.

I lead for 2k and Bully calls.

River is a 6.

Right Mr Bully, time for you to do what I know you will do on the river. I check, Bully shoves, I FISTPUMP call for my whole stack and thump down the Aces. Two of the guys at my end actually shout “yes!” when I call, as they realise the Bully has been trapped.

Unfortunately, celebrations on the East Wing are cut short as Bully shows down quads. Sigh. Only 2 hands beat me in this hand, and he’d have raised QQ preflop. I’m sure he’d have done the same move if he had some weak house like pocket 7s or a lone Queen. Just bad timing I guess, but fairly embarrassing to thump down your hand triumphantly, only to realise you have trapped yourself.

Jalont fared much better in this tournament, unfortunately bubbling in about 38th spot. He lost a 90k coin flip at this point, and if he had won that would have been able to have a decent run at the serious money.

More DTD reports to follow……….

Check out Dungbeetle’s blogMagical Mystery Poker Tour

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P&L GBP 2009
Live Tournaments (70)
Live Cash 142
Online Tournaments (1,367)
Online Cash (285)
Poker Festivals (525)
Rake (283)

Total (2,388)

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Tags: Poker Articles, Poker Tournament

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