$1 SNG with some friends – WE OWN IT, BABY!

My first inclination after last night’s success was to get right back on the .10/.20 horse and hope for some good hands to really get myself paid off. However, I got a text from my friend Joe right as I was about to sign on, so off to Sit-N-Go land I went. Honestly, I am a mediocre tournament player, as I mentioned yesterday. I’m not terribly comfortable with ever-escalating blinds, and most of my strategy is based on how I handle playing against a full table. I have ventured into SNGs before, and the best I’ve ever done is 3rd. Today, I went one better, but was absolutely clowned heads-up against my other friend, Josh.

Oh, and as you’ll see, I ended up being a total card rack tonight, and a run of cards like this in a ring game would have been like printing money in all likelihood. At the end of the day, though, this is supposed to be fun. And, I’d rather have some fun with friends if the opportunity is there…I think I’d be a rather sad excuse for a person if I didn’t.

On to some crucial hands:

Hand 3: Two off the button, guess what I wake up with? I haven’t held the weapons of mass destruction in ages, but here I am with Ac-Ad. The player in front of me raises to $140, and I am loving life. I call, everyone else folds, and we see a 7c-4d-3s flop. I knew right away I probably wouldn’t get donked out on with 6-5 or 7-4 or something…not with that pre-flop raise. Full speed ahead, captain! Mr. Aggressive bets $310, I call. Normally I don’t slow-play monsters, but there is absolutely nothing scary about that board. The turn is 6c, so now with two clubs out there, I’m resolved to get all the chips in. If he’s donking out on me, he’s going to pay for it. He saves me the trouble though, and bets $930. Interesting…why not all-in if that much? Typically, I consider that to be a sign of weakness as they want to at least have something if things don’t go their way. I had him on a lower pair or A-K here, so I put him all-in. He calls, and shows Qc-Qs. Awesome! He’s dead to two outs, and the 6s sends him home. On one hand, unless he put me on K-K or A-A, there was little for him to be afraid of out there. Then again, what did he think I called $310 with? I think the trouble is that a lot of donks do the all-in thing with A-A hoping that someone has a hand they like. It’s just that hand, really…any other monster is usually cause for check-calling all the way. So, I double-up nice and early...up to $3010!

Hand 5: The guy to my left, “skimwater”, calls my 60-cent raise (I had 8-8), as does Josh. Flop is A-Q-4, Josh bet $60 and skim raised to $120 on each street thereafter, with Josh calling each. My homie shows A-K, skim showed A-9. Wow. What do you think he was calling you with, bro? I pretty much had my read on this guy right there, and as I’ll explain later, he became quite the irritating little lunatic.

Hands 8-11: Skim goes nuts, betting and raising with ludicrously-high turn bets on all these hands. He’s up to $1953 for hand 11. I fold my awesome J-2, four callers to a 10s-9s-9c flop. Early-position guy pops it up to $150, skim calls, everyone else flees. The turn is 6d, the original bettor puts in $225, skim goes all-in, other guy calls. The original bettor shows 4c-4d, skim shows 10h 7c. The river is As, and the first guy is gone. I have no words…how did he not put him on A-10, K-10, Q-10 or J-10? He liked his 7 kicker that much? Really? Anyway, Skim won hand 12 as well, so he was at $3430 at that point to my $2840.

Hand 14: I didn’t win as much with them this time, but I see Ac-Ad in early position. I raise to $60, with visions of Skim raising all-in in my head. He folds, and Joe is my only customer in the BB. Let me just say that he and my friend Al are almost incapable of being trapped. Al has dodged bullets on quite a few occasions in my presence, and Joe is a survivor…his instincts (and Al’s) are almost always spot-on (especially in comparison to the author). The flop comes 5s-2s-2d. I have no idea what Joe has, as he checks. I don’t want him catching anything with random spades, so I bet $60 to see what happens. He goes away, leaving me with just a $75 profit. Every time I get a monster against those guys, I feel like a vaudeville villain trying to tie them to the railroad tracks. Curses, foiled again.

Hand 15: OK, this is almost not fair. Under the gun, I get Ah-Ks. I raise up to $90, and a previously-quiet player calls a few seats ahead of me. Everyone else bids adieu. The flop comes Jh-3s-2s. With two overcards and the potential for a runner-runner second-nut flush, against one caller, the continuation bet is automatic. Quiet Man calls. The turn is an absolutely beautiful Ad. I bet $360, he calls. What the hell is he calling me with? I have no idea, but I’m confident in my standing in the hand. The river is the Qs. I admit that I was a little cavalier here and wasn’t really thinking too much about what he had…if he had A-J, Q-J or J-J, I was just going to have to pay him off. In retrospect, I’m amazed that I wasn’t a little more frightened of the flush draw that was completed on the river…you can see how I overplay the shit out of top pair-top kicker sometimes. I bet $240 (OK, guess I was at least a little nervous), he calls and shows 5s5c. Man, thank fucking goodness for the stupid. On the next hand, the Skim All-In Special sent him to the rail when his 9-6 beat Quiet Man’s K-9 when the 6 came on the flop.

Hand 21: The guy directly to my right is knocked out by, well, Guess Who. He held J-J, the flop came J-7-2. The other guy ended up having A-J, so the result was inevitable. When another 7 hit on the turn, Skim’s ridiculous over-bet was called and that was that. That’s great, but what about the other 90% of the time when the other guy quietly deposits his hand in the muck? He and I are the big stacks, he leads $5,670 to $3,710.

Hand 22: My 10c-10s is good enough for a $150 raise (25/50 blinds), which Skim calls. The flop is Jh-8h-7s. I bet $325, he raises $650, and I insta-call. Honestly, I didn’t believe he had much other than maybe a flush draw or perhaps second or third pair. The turn comes Js, and he immediately throws in $1,625. Well, that made my decision easy, didn’t it? If he had put out a teaser bet, I almost certainly would have called (with two Jacks out there, there was less chance he had the third), and I maybe even would have raised. Instead, this was an easy fold…I’m at least tournament-savvy enough to wait for a better spot when I’m safely in second chip position with 74 BBs. I show my 10-10 to let him know I’m capable of folding it, and he was kind enough to show his J-2. Yes, he called a 3x BB raise with J-2 off-suit. No, I don’t know why either. At this point, our boy Skim is starting to royally get on my tits. It’s $6,495-$2,910 now, but I’m still in decent shape.

Hand 24: Skim raises to $100 pre-flop, Random Anonymous Guy 2 is his only customer. The flop is 9-4-4, RAG2 checks, and Skim goes all-in for $6,295. Err, OK. What exactly was he going to call you with? The inevitable fold is met with a showing of Ks-Qs. Cheers, thanks for the free information.

Hand 27: Skim wins the next two (I have to give it to him, in a crazed sort of way he’s playing his big stack pretty well), and he raises this one to $100. I re-raise to $250 with Kc-Qd, he calls. Flop is 6s-5d-3h, and he checks. Huh, that’s odd. I throw out $575, and he goes away. Well, that was uncharacteristic. At this point, I was beginning to think that he had a deliberate game plan and as much as I hate to admit it, it was working. It was hard as hell to put him on anything, that’s for sure. It’s not how I’d play because all it takes is someone waking up with a monster hand to send you packing, but he was accumulating chips like mad. The smart thing to do at that point would probably be to change gears and slow it down for a few orbits before picking up speed again. He wasn’t that smart, though.

Hand 28: Speaking of changing gears, Josh starts to pick up speed, and wins a nice pot off of Random Anonymous Guy 1. With that, he overtakes me for second place.

Hand 29: My lucky number is 29, it was my hockey number in high school, it’s my soccer number now. It also was the hand where RAG2 proved to be…a bird? A plane? No, it’s SUPERDONK! I find Qs-Qc in the BB. RAG2 calls, Joe raises to $150, I pop it up to $600 (I really, really don’t want A-x beating me). RAG2 calls, Joe (having possession of a brain) goes away. The flop comes 6c-5h-3s. While you do have to spare a thought for what this guy is calling with, this is a tournament and you do have to accumulate chips sometime. I still had $1,220 if all the chips went in, so I figured this was a good spot to go on the attack. I bet $500, and he goes all-in for $1,140. I go into the tank for just about the whole 15 seconds, and I considered using my extra time. However, at the end of the day, I was still 24.5 BBs to the good if I guessed wrong, so I couldn’t justify a fold. Good thing too, because Mr. Genius shows 2c-2h. Now, if a 4 had come off, I wouldn’t be writing this right now as I would have probably had a stress-induced heart attack. Instead, the turn and river were 9s and As, leaving me with a clean bill of health and an extremely healthy chip stack. Down to 5 players, I was second again - $6,470 to $4,775.

Hand 33: Joe was down to his last $495, but Skim doubled him up when his A-Q unluckily got beat by 10-7 when the 7 paired. Seriously, you can’t kill this guy.

Hand 34: Chip leader, baby! Still at 25/50, I get 5c-4c in the BB. Skim calls out of the SB, everyone else bolts. The flop comes Kc-7c-6c. Wunderbar! However, who the hell knows what this maniac next to me has, so let’s not start sucking each other’s dicks yet. I bet $100, he raises to $400. I was slightly concerned, but also fairly certain that he was capable of re-raising with total squadoosh. The turn was 10h, Skim bets $450 and I call. I suppose at this point, I made the decision that he didn’t have a higher flush. The river was 3s, and he bet $900. Normally sequentially-increasing bets are a fairly reliable indicator of strength, but I just didn’t buy it for some reason. I trusted my read and called (notice I didn’t re-raise, hedging against the possibility that I was being roped in). He showed Kh-7d for two pair, so my flush was good. I took down a monster pot, and now led $6,625-$4,175.

Hands 35-41: Josh changed gears brilliantly once it became four-handed, and he basically traded these with Skim. I ask him via this very public forum whether he’s also a disciple of the Harrington school, as he seems to advocate the “tight early, loose late” strategy. Skim had $4,375, but Josh was knocking on the door with $3,360. Joe was on life support with $640.

Hand 42: Speaking of Joe, he went all-in (it’s now 50/100). I had Ad-8d, and figured it was probably ahead of Random Desperate Short-Stack Hand. Well, not exactly. He had Ac-8c, and not surprisingly we chopped it. Apparently, you have to shoot the creature directly in the head, or else it keeps on shambling towards you in its quest for delicious brains.

Hand 44: Joe raises again in hand 43, and my J-2 isn’t worth a call. This time, Josh calls his all-in raise, and it was the classic race: Josh with 8-8, Joe with Q-J off-suit. A Queen hit on the flop, and Joe doubled up once again. This hand has been brought to you by the Umbrella Corporation.

Hand 47: Josh closes the gap on me with a timely all-in bet. I got 10-10 in the BB, and he raises to $300 from the SB. No one else plays, so we’re off to the flop which comes K-8-5 rainbow. I check (I don’t know why, that’s almost always continuation-bet time from me), he bets $300, and I call. I don’t know why that was worth a call if it wasn’t worth a bet in the first place. The turn is a 7 – I bet $700, and he goes all-in with his last $2,195. I’d still have $3,005 if I called and lost, but it didn’t seem like a great spot to risk relinquishing the chip lead. If I remember correctly, I figured there was a 25-30% chance he was on a total bluff, and a 70-75% chance he had 5-5, 8-8 or any King-Other Picture Card hand. Risking $2,195 into a pot of $1,900 when I could very easily be dead to two outs (or drawing dead if he had K-K, a reasonable holding in this scenario) is not something I generally look for in a hand. I gracefully made my exit, and he took over second place with over $4,000 in chips for the first time. If that was a bluff, I take my hat off to you…it was a great one. And, because it’s not every other hand like SOME people in this tourney, I’m much less likely to call if you were bluffing. Well done.

Hand 49: Josh raises first to $300, Skim calls. Flop is K-5-3 with two clubs. Skim bets $650, Josh re-raises to $1,500. I was shocked, but Skim went away. As much as I was picking on him before, I think he was really a pretty good player, and we were just all irritated by the success of his style. He smartly folded here, and Josh was now less than $500 behind me.

Hand 50: One of Josh’s few mistakes – he called a re-raise from Skim on a Q-10-10 board. Interestingly, Skim checked it down the rest of the way, and showed J-10. Josh showed 3-3, which I think were slightly over-played after the flop. That worked for me, though…I was $1,000 ahead again.

Hand 52: With 8-8 on the button, only Joe calls my $300 raise. I hit my set on the flop with a Q-8-6 rainbow board, and it went check-check. The turn was a 7, and with two hearts out there I picked up a little speed (I think I pick up too much speed on the turn in this situation…maybe?). Joe bet $400, and my re-raise to $1,200 chased him away. That would have set him all-in, and I suppose it would be hard to expect him to have A-Q or K-Q when he checked the turn.

Hand 53: With K-10 off-suit under the gun, I raise to $300. Joe goes all-in for $980, and I fold. In retrospect, that’s probably virgin-cheerleader tight before the flop. Skim calls with K-3 off-suit, and Joe’s A-J off-suit holds up when all five cards miss them both. Joe is now past normal zombie status and now resembles that fucking thing from Resident Evil 2 (or is it 3?) that shows up more often than Jason Vorhees and mumbles “Staaaaaaaaaaaars”. Ugh. Moving on…

Hand 54: I get K-10 again in the BB now, and fold it again to Joe’s $400 raise. Josh calls, but can’t stand the heat of Joe’s continuation bet (flop was J-7-3 with two spades). Don’t look now, but Joe’s in third!

Me: $5,550 – Josh: $3,695 – Joe: $2,910 – Skim: $2,845


Hand 55-57: Skim re-awakens, and wins all three hands with some solid continuation bets and re-raises. He goes from 4th to 2nd just that quick.

Hand 58: I call people donkeys pretty often here, but as much as I can dish it out, I can take it too. The name of this blog is what it is because at different points in my poker career (hell, even in one session), I feel I have been all three of those. This time, I was a lucky, lucky donkey, and the shamrock-covered horseshoe up my ass sent Skim to the rail.

I found Qs-9d in the BB, and called Skim’s raise from the SB up to $300. The flop was Ah-Qc-7d. He checks, I make the $300 information bet, and he goes all-in for his last $4,645. Now, I’d like to say that I went into the tank for ages and came up with some brilliant thought process to justify my call. As it turns out, I just felt like he had done this too often for my liking in the second quarter of hands that were played, and he had shown in the past that he was capable of doing so with bluffing. I also felt he was capable of doing so with third pair, or a tiny pocket pair. This was a hand where the math went out the window, and I went entirely on my gut about the player. As it turns out, I was dead wrong...I called damn near instantly and my heart sank when I saw his Ac-3h. With no flush or straight possibilities, I was dead to 5 outs, meaning he was an 82% favorite to win the hand. Well, for fucking once, I got to donk out on someone else for a change, as the miracle 9 spiked on the turn, and the river was a blank. I would have been down…I DESERVED to be down to my last $155, but instead Skim was out and I rejoiced in the fact that not only did I definitely cash, all three friends had survived into the money. Nice.

Hand 67: I sat on my giganto-stack for a while, resolving not to play unless I had a strong hand. Joe and Josh traded some wins, until Joe re-raised Josh’s $450 pre-flop bet (75/150 now) all-in for his last $1,860. Josh called, and showed Kc-7c against Joe’s Jd-10s. Two Kings came out on the flop, and just to add insult to injury, the last two streets both were fives to fill up Josh’s boat. Joe went to the rail, as Hogie finally found the rocket launcher to slay the zombie-demon-beast-awful metaphor-beast.

Hand 68: I won a heads-up hand! I really, really did it! All by myself, with no one else’s help! Sadly, this was the last one. I raised to $450 pre-flop with Qd-6h, Josh folds.

Hand 69: I have Jd-5c in the BB. Josh raises to $450, I decide not to be pushed around and call. The flop is A-4-4 rainbow, and I decide to check-fold and wait for a better spot. I probably should have looked into that strategy in the next hand as well.

Hand 70: I have Qh-2d in the SB. He raises to $450, I call. The flop is 10-8-5 with two clubs. He makes the $450 continuation bet, and at this point, I kind of lost my mind and decided that OMG MUST MAKE STAND. I re-raise to $1,350, and at the very least he went into the tank for a bit. Unfortunately, when he came out, he re-raised to $2,750. Dammit shit fuck motherfuck shit shit shit. I can’t take the heat, and fold. He now leads $8,855-$6,145.

Hand 71: I have 4c-3h in the BB. He raises to $450, and I muck quickly. I am getting frustrated now.

Hand 72: I call with Ac-2h in the SB. He actually does not raise, so the flop comes Qh-5c-2s. He checks, and that won him the tournament right there. I bet $150 as a kind of teaser type bet because heads-up, it’s so hard to hit flops that I was sure I was ahead (especially with no pre-flop raise and the post-flop check, I at that point eliminated any Queen holdings). Josh re-raises to $450, and I immediately double it to $900. I imagine Josh knew right here that I was hooked on the line, and not going anywhere. Yes kids, I decided to go to war with third pair despite the maxim “Never go broke with a Queen in your hand”. Don’t look at me, I never make it to heads-up so I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing here! Josh re-re-raises to $3,000, and I call. Yep, at this point, I’m pot-committed. The turn is a 5h. At this point, I eliminate any holding Josh might have that has a 5, just going by the odds. Again, I was convinced he didn’t have a Queen for the reasons already stated. Josh set me all-in, and really, at this point I should have changed my mind about the Queen, mucked this piece of shit hand, and set about trying to grind my way back into it. Instead, I called, and took it on the chin when he showed Qd-4c. Just as a big, giant middle finger to your fearless correspondent, the river was another Queen. Well fuck you too, Sportsbook.

Honestly, Josh played an almost flawless tournament and deserved to win it. I remember him posting some hands he played to the message board we all post at last year, and thinking he had a loooooooooooong way to go. Fast-forward a year, and here he is teaching me a lesson in heads-up tournament poker. I think I’m getting better at this version of the game, but I feel like a UFC fighter that has the tools but doesn’t know how to finish fights. Josh seems to be a fairly deadly finisher, and that was about as one-sided of a heads-up match as you’ll get. It had some shades of Fedor vs. Sylvia, really. Heh.

Anyway, I profited almost as much with this as I did in my 90-minute session at .10/.20 last night, so it’s not all bad. Until next time!