NLH Shootout

Dear Herd:

Today we are playing an interesting no limit hold em tournament. Our table of 10 plays until there's only one of us left. That player will advance to tomorrow. We start with 4500 and chips, playing 25-50. This will be a fast-moving tournament, and I will not be able to give much of a play-by-play.

On a sidenote, this would normally be really good for me, because I will get to learn a lot about my fellow players. We will not be broken up. On a bad note, Phil Ivey just sat down on my right side, shook my hand, and said, "last time we played together was last year's horse tournament." I don't recall that experience going very well for the donkey.

They have now paused the tournament 10 minutes in in order to deal with some registration problems. I will take this moment to describe the first four hands of the tournament. There is no one sitting immediately to our right or our left, also be seven seat at the table has no one sitting there.

First hand, we start in Seat 3, under the gun. We have the 79 of diamonds. We raise to 100. We get one caller from C-5. Moving forward I will refer to seats as C, because that is how my dictation works.

Flop comes two King King with two diamonds. We continuation bet 150 and he folds. We are the table leader.

Second hand seat five raises to 100 and we call from the big blind with 24 hearts. The flop Comes Ace Jack seven. All of them are hearts. Giddyup, we have flopped a flush. We bet 125 and he calls. We are afraid of another heart, because ours are so low that if another heart comes and he has one he will beat us. The turn comes Six of diamonds. We bet 325 and he calls. The river comes nine of clubs, perfect. We bet 1025, hoping he will see it as an attempt to buy the pot. He calls and folds when he sees our hearts.

Hand three we are in the small blind with KQ. Seat five, and please keep in mind that C-5 moves one seat to the right every hand, raises to 100 and we call. The flop comes five Queen King with two hearts. Amazing, we have flopped top two pair. It is our lucky day. We check and he bets 125. We call. The turn comes Jack of clubs. If he has a straight, which is possible, this is very bad for us. From his late seat, he could have bet pre-flop with a 9T or a TA and continue that after the flop to see if we would fold. We check and he bets 350. We call. The river comes six of hearts. Although this puts a possible flush on the board, it is actually good for us. Now, it looks like we might have a flush, because we have been calling down since the flop. Also, we have showed our willingness to call pre-flop bets with a 24 of hearts already. So, if he does have a straight, and we bet into him, he's very unlikely to raise. We bet 850 and he calls. We show our cards and he folds. We've now won the first three hands of the tournament.

Hand 4 - Seat 3 bets 100 under the gun and everyone folds to us on the button with 47. We fold. Our fist non-win.

Under the gun we raise to 75 with 57c. 2 callers after us and then the small blind raises to 400. Hmmmmm, good pot odds, especially if the two behind us call. We call and the call. The Flop comes 335 rainbow. We have a small pair. More importantly, it didn't hit the SB who is firing 800 more into the pot. We call and the other 2 players fold. Turn comes 8. SB pushes all in for 1900. Hmmm. He either has 2 big cards or a pair bigger than 8. That's a lot of pairs but it's a big pot and the odds favor that he has two big cards. We call. He shows AK and river comes J. We take it down with fives and threes.

Seat 4 raises to 75 and seat 6 re-raises to 225. We are in the BB with KK and raise to 825. Flop 69Q rainbow. Perfect. He has 3800ish. Hmmmm. 1500 bet gets us all in on the turn but gives him an unnecessary look for an ace on that turn. We push. He goes into the tank for a minute and folds. There are only 45000 chips on the table. Would love to have picked up more but happy to grab 1000 here.

In my upcoming treatise I will call this hand the "Check-raising Phil Ivy like you've already got it Hand". Playing 25-50 6-handed. Seat 4 raises to 125. Phil calls from the button and we call with 68 from the SB. BB calls and 4 of us see the 79J rainbow flop. We have an open ended straight draw, which is good 4 players but we are in bad position and cant call a big raise (which would know players out and hurt our odds anyway). We check, as does the BB and seat 4. Phil bets 325. That's going to knock the other players out so our good odds are gone. Let's see if he's trying to purchase. We raise to 825 and he folds.

Seat 4 raises to 125 and phil calls. We call from the BB with K8d and the three of us see the KTT flop with one diamond. We bet 300 and they both call. Turn comes Ah. We check and they both check. River comes 8d. We bet 1050 and seat 4 calls and shows A9. Ouch. Bad turn card. Bad.

Everyone folds to Phil who raises to 125 from the button. The small blind calls and it comes to us. We have AA. Giddey-up. We raise to 375. As we have been playing the role of poker bully for a while, this is not surprise anyone. Phil calls and the small blindfolds. The flop comes 45Q with 2 spades. We bet 400 and he calls. Turn comes 6d. He cant be playing 78 or 23, can he? Maybe, but we bet 750 and he calls. River comes 5c. He probably doesn't have a 5 and that gives us 2 pair which probably isn't necessary. He has about 2900 in chips. We bet 1600. I know that Phil values every chip and will not see tis as leaving him with unnecessary chips if he loses. He calls and mucks his hand when he sees our aces.

Phil gets knocked out a few hands later and heads off to the Razz tournament.

We end round 2 with 5 players at our table and 18250 in chips. The officials are removing from play the two players that never bought in, so the total number of chips on the table is about 36,500. Although we have half of them, this is very far from over.

The game will now be moving very fast. Hopefully i will have more good news in 2 hours.