Event 18 Recap and a Variety of Various Things

I don't have the slightest idea of where this post is going to go, but it's probably not going to be a very happy and positive one because I just turned a 20 bet win into a 35 bet loss in the Commerce 20/40 and am absurdly hungry. It took the Commerce poo-flingers all of about 3 hours to make me remember why exactly it is that I hate them so very, very much, with one gem of a conversation going like this:

Seat 1: "Dealer, how much longer are you here?"

Dealer: "Not long"

Seat 1: "How long is that?"

Dealer: "3 minutes"

Seat 1: "In that case, I call time."

Seat 1 now stares blankly forward for 30 seconds while the action is on him. Seat 9, an aspiring professional who is just beyond awful finally asks what's going on and Seat 1 declares "I called time" and continues to sit there. 15 or 20 seconds later he finally raises and eventually wins a pot that is about half as big as it should have been because both he and seat 9 are terrible. Anyway, over the course of my last 4 hours in the casino all manner of atrocities were committed against me, such as Q2hh limping UTG and cracking my aces up, AK running into KK on a board of 974-K-A, and AT repeatedly flopping top-top (or topsies as ontherail15 told me is the currently correct term) when there was practically zero chance I was winning after the flop action but hey there's 12 bets out there I guess I call the turn oh look 14:1 closing the action on the river heads up I call oh I see you have queens very nice hand sir. Anyway, back to some event 18 details. First of all, here are the results. A guy from my table came in second place, the one who thought he recognized me from Commerce and I said well that must be it but is actually from Michigan so I really dunno what's going on there but good for him he was basically a super nice guy who actually wished me well on my way to busto-land. And also here are some pictures of me looking super thoughtful and probably paying off a check/raise like a slot machine (I really wish I knew what hand these were taken during).

As I said before my table was a hilarious mix of extremely good and extremely bad players. Bill Chen and Alexander Veldhuis led the way in terms of "name pros", ensuring that we always had some people around railing the table, and Brent Courson (2nd place guy) and I did our best to play solid lag-taggy poker. The other 6 players were pretty much terrible, committing all manor of heinous sins such as open limping 87o under the gun, 3-betting 54s, cold-calling the small blind first in with Q4s, peeling the flop with complete air, and basically doing almost everything wrong that most of my 20/40 opponents do. To be honest after event 12 I was a little concerned that the field was not as soft as I'd have liked, but event 18 did more than enough to dissuade me from that preposterous notion. The table maniac, sadly, was on my immediate left, and on his left sat Bill Chen who quickly showed that he had absolutely no qualms about getting his chips into the pot behind this retard. In one hilarious hand I opened the button with 99, was 3 bet and 4 bet, raised the K87 flop, bet the 5 turn, and also bet the like jack river purely for value and Bill called me all the way down with the 66 he capped with. I mean OK I guess the hand is kind of standard but I didn't even consider not betting the river which is what makes it kind of funny. Basically the maniac's plan was to bet and raise every pot he was in at least until the point it was obvious that he was completely crushed, at which point he'd just call down because lol limit hold'em. Like I told Pete on the phone "So the flop is 976 and the maniac and Bill are going to raise and 3 bet behind me because on that board it is impossible for them to have less than a gut shot or 2 overs" and he just kind of laughed but scout's honor it was true! So anyway I wrote down a bunch of hands to discuss them with some other people but here are some of the choice beats I took.

The first two hands went horrible (we started play 5 handed and didn't get above 6 for about 30 minutes), with me opening the SB with A3s and getting to showdown against the maniac's AK on a 974hh-Kr-Kr board, then opening the button with A2ss, getting 3-bet, flopping a pair of twos and eventually getting shown A4cc on a T72r-Xc-Yc board for the stone cold nutter-butters. Dude actually declared "nuts" as he tabled his hand and I'm just like "Well this is going great already". So I lost 8 bets on the first two hands and don't know if I ever even got above those 5200 chips again the entire tournament. Realize at this point I wasn't sure the guy was a maniac but let's be honest he sure looked the part (kind of like an 80's porn star who's gained about 35 pounds), but within 30 minutes I saw him triple-barrel 54s after 3-betting preflop ("I'll just outplay him post flop") on a board with like 15 face cards in it where he again back-doored a flush, raise 32s like 3 seats from the button, and bet the turn and river with K6 of diamonds after the guy who 3-bet him preflop checked back on the flop obviously just to show down (and he did showdown, and his Ace high was good, and yes that means the maniac raised the King Six sooted). Next Bill Chen got in on the action, cold-calling my raise of 1 or 2 limpers with QTo on the button. He raised me on the 984r flop and I almost laughed out loud at the preposterousness of ever conceiving of folding any hand I had in my range except KQ or KJ. The turn was a beautiful ace (I have Ace-King by the way) and I got off the check/raise, but river jack no problem here you go Bill enjoy the chips. Next up I 3-bet a late position open from the button with AcTh and see the board run out AJ8cc-5c-Ts. Of course my opponent had K9 of clubs and I lost the absolute maximum (7 big bets I think...my river raise is probably pretty thin but I have the ace of clubs and the jack is on board how many flushes can he really have Ax(KQc) seems pretty freaking likely to me but I guess I should fold to the 3-bet). Next I unremarkably run AQ ui into AK ui on like a 9-high board, then get floated by K6o on a Q95r board to see a King fall on the turn. The guy didn't even raise, he just checked and called, then checked the river and I checked back to see his gorgeous holding. This is the same guy whom I later 3-bet with 88 and who took the check/call, check/call, check/show the nuts on a J74r-3-A board with QQ, and also cold-called the small blind first in with the glorious Q4dd and managed to flop a hand with 51% equity against my so-called topsies or TPTK or top-top as it were and donk it, then pay two bets on the turn, the only street where I had any edge, the re-donk the river when he made his "five of the same" or "flush". Some other terrible stuff happened to me, mostly at the hands of the maniac. He opened J9cc UTG and I defended QTo in a 4 way pot and the flop was Q87cc and I got 4 bets in 3 ways with him the afore-mentioned terrible player. Only one bet went in on the turn and I managed to fold the river club and see all four of their clubs, the jack the nine the ten and the king in total. Just wow guys, wow, solid effort. The Death Blow is also dealt by the maniac, with me raising a couple of limpers (I told you this game was fantastic) in the CO and him insta-coldcalling the button with 75o and flopping K75. We put 4 bets in (bare minimum honestly I almost raised the turn) and the board ran out K75-7-3 and he declared "7s full" on the river and I'm just like "Not 5s full? Sevens full?" and he shows me his gem and really all I can muster is "I guess it's just not my day." I had a few chips left at this point and managed to lose all but 125 of them to the afore-mentioned mega-fish when his J9 cracked my QQ (again he donked the flop, again I waited until the turn to raise, and again he donked the river of the JT7-X-9 board and again I cried). A few hands later I was all in blind and my opponent made top two pair and that was the end of that.

Honestly I'm not really sure what I learned from all this, at least not yet, but I'll write more about that tomorrow.