A good start at MATH

I got off to a great start in the Mondays At The Hoy tournament last night. Sadly, I was unable to carry through from the good start.

I've mentioned before that when hoyazo and I get into a hand together I often get the impression of two boxers warily circling each other in the center of the ring, each waiting for the other to attempt the first punch. Last night we were more like two super-heavyweights, feet planted firmly, determined to see who could take and deliver the most punches. Rocky and Apollo in the middle of the ring. Only without the funny shorts.

The very first hand I get 54o on the button. It folds to me. I want to play the hand and figure I might as well toss in a raise at this point. (This is a double-stack tournament so I've got plenty of chips to waste.) I make it 3BB. Both hoyazo in the SB and dnasty13 in the BB call.

Flop comes K54 rainbow. Hoy bets out 220 with 270 in the pot. Dnasty13 folds. Naturally, I call.

Turn brings a T, still rainbow. Hoy checks. I bet 450, a bit more than half the pot. He calls.

The river brings a 5, giving me fives full of fours. Hoy checks. I really don't have a good read on what he might be holding here. Maybe a middle pair. Possibly a weak king. Something like jacks or queens wouldn't be inconsistent with his play so far. Maybe a straight draw, hoping to hit on the river and bust me.

Since he's come this far, I'm figuring he's probably going to call my river bet, so my objective is to maximize my return. What is he most likely to call? A smaller value bet? An overbet that looks desperate? I opt for the latter. Sadly, hoyazo folds. Thinking I missed an opportunity to extract more chips, I'm still not too upset at picking up over 800 chips on the first hand.

Round 1 to Patchmaster.

Not too much later Hoy and I got into another battle. Unfortunately, Full Tilt or Poker Tracker or somebody managed to lose the hand history. And my memory of the hand is a bit hazy. I recall having K-something and hitting a king on the flop. Chips started flying and hoyazo eventually pushed all-in. I went into the tank. He certainly could have had me beat, but running through the action in my head it just didn't add up. I made the call. Hoy showed just an unpaired ace.

Knockout in the second round, Patchmaster is victorious. It should be interesting to read what Hoyazo has to say about this hand.

I had more than doubled up before level one was over. This was certainly the most chips I'd ever had in a blogger event this early. And I built the stack even more, having over 7000 sometime in level 3. Then I ran into Astin, the card rack.

I get AQo and make a pot sized raise. Astin calls. Flop is AK6. I bet 250, about 2/3 the pot. Astin raises to 750. I decided to play big stack poker and push him all in. He calls and turns over pocket sixes, eventually catching a fourth one on the river just to rub it in.

I don't know about Astin. He plays a ton of hands, way more than can possibly be justified by his cards. And he plays them very aggressively. Yet it seems every single time somebody makes a run against him he's got the goods. At one point later in the evening, after he'd built up a healthy stack, he was raising practically every hand. And winning almost every time somebody called him down. An aggressive card rack is a bloody nightmare to play against.

As for me, Astin's quads were the beginning of my demise. I still had a very healthy stack, but I just wasn't connecting on much. My stack began to dwindle. I got most of my chips back from Astin later on, but by then things had changed drastically. Astin had a huge stack and I was down to M<10. I eventually went out in something like 17th.

I guess next up in the blogger world is The Mookie on Wednesday.