Defending A Blind Attack from slb159

(Very long post) You’ve heard of defending an attack on your blind position, I’m sure. Players in late position can attack your blind, and if you never defend even with marginal hands, others will constantly steal those funds. Well, it seems as I’m on the receiving end of a blind attack after my Mondays at the Hoy tournament played at PokerStars. slb159 had some pretty vicious things to say about blogger tourneys in general and me in particular, so I decided that I’d have to defend.

This gentleman, who I’ve never met (Steve I believe from seeing comments left from others who know him or met him at the Bash), bubbled in 4th while I came in 3rd. Here are two posts which he put up plus a comment:

• “Then csquard (CC, me) gets down below 500 chips and hit AA TWICE in a row? Nice, glad you made the money and glad that someone has to go out on the bubble (me). Must be nice to make 100x your stack in two orbits, but I can’t play with morons anymore.” (Monday)
• “To survive horribly-moronic plays only to see someone with an M less than one pick up AA twice in a row on the bubble is beyond my comprehension.” (Tuesday)
• “CC…never said you played those AA hands moronically, but I have seen you make some questionable plays. Not sure if you play non-blogger tourneys the same, but I wouldn’t think so. Obviously, you’re a successfull player, just that I see extremely weird stuff at the blogger tournaments.” (Tuesday, response to my comment)

He goes on to say he won’t play blogger tourneys anymore, various folks defend blogger tourneys as horrible play, just have fun, etc. I don’t want to get into anything regarding blogger tourneys (are they fun, are they serious, etc.). I will briefly say that I always try to play my best whenever I play, whether it is $0.25/0.50 NLHE, a $20+2 blogger tourney, $10/20 HORSE, $15/30 LHE at the Bellagio, my $1/2 LHE home game, a $60 with rebuy event at the Bike, or even my one attempt at a WSOP event. Tournaments are fundamentally different than ring games as the money invested is fixed. I consider myself an above average MTT player who rarely plays events, a below average NLHE cash game player, an above average LHE player, and a successful HORSE neophyte. I don’t feel MTT’s are +EV due to the need to get in the top three of almost any event to payback the significant number of entries required to get there. Cashing isn’t what it’s about, you really have to win or almost win. I don’t know if it is accurate but that is my opinion of MTT’s and my perception of me accompanied by my Excel spreadsheet of results, PokerTracker, and my bankroll.

We’ll pick up the MATH at the Final Table, where I entered with the chip lead. No, some backstory first: I’d gotten through what I considered a tough first table with Iak, Jordan, jeciimd, and Joe Speaker who I knew along with greenie and slb. I felt like I’d played very well to get the chip lead, taking out jeci with 10-10 vs AQo and flopping a set, folding the following hands pre-flop: A9o, 33, 55, A3o, AJo, 88 (I mention these as what I lay down is normally a better sign of how I’m playing than what I win with), grabbing chips with KK twice (Jordan’s JJ and bdidde’s QQ), winning a race with AJ vs. 66, taking the blinds on the button with AA, losing a small pot with 88 vs 10-10 and overcards on the board, winning several pots raising and using my chips, coming over the top of raises with AK three times only to see folks lay cards down (Greenie twice and Wil once), winning with AJ and AT late position raises, folding for two orbits. I had a key hand with greenie, who I had been attacking circumstantially (I got big cards against him but wasn’t focused on getting him per se). I re-raised with A-Q, a Q hit the flop, he bet and I put him all-in, his Q-10 in bad shape to send him out. He played very well to put up with my moves against him, and I always had cards against him. That put me at $9870 in chips, but I doubled up L0k1 for $1200 with KQ vs. his 44.

Back to the final table now. Hoy moved up steadily at the final table while I stayed firmly in second chip position, playing fairly tight and solidly after I’d lost the chip lead. Five handed I continued to play tight, losing about $1k in chips with blind folds until I raised to $1240 with blinds at $200/400 (I had 88) and Wil called from bb, flop came A-10-5, I bet $1650 and Wil folded. Once Hoy knocked Wil out, he had a 2:1 chip advantage on me and it stood like this:

• Hoy: $17,155
• csquard: $9,380
• JoeSpeaker: $4,290
• slb159: $2,175

Only three places pay, but one of my strengths I feel I have is that I don’t play to cash in any event; I play to win (maybe to a fault but I think it’s served me well in both live tourneys and online). I quickly got up to $11,210 taking two pots (one with a baby ace and another flopping top pair with Q-10 from small blind). slb raised from sb $1k to go with blinds at $200/400, and I defended my bb with a very marginal 5c4c. QKT6A was the rainbow board, and he took the pot with 10c-8c. Another orbit brought 4c-2c in my bb, and I checked as Joe had limped UTG. Flop came 6h-Qc-3c, and I bet $1100 at the $1100 pot and took it down.

We now sat at the following chip counts: Hoy ($17.1k), csquard ($10.3k), JoeSpeaker ($3.5k), and slb ($2.0k) when this last hand before the break occurred that I feel I misplayed. I raised from the button after slb folded, holding A7o and making it $1310 to go. Joe moved all-in from the sb for $2175 more. I was caught, and it was a $2175 call into a pot of $4185. Should I have folded there? I knew I was behind, but the chance to get Joe out with the pot odds brought my call. He had AKo, caught a K on the flop, I picked up a gutshot on the turn that didn’t get there. That changed things significantly for me, as it would now be a dogfight the rest of the way with Hoy ($16.7k), Joe ($7.5k), csquard ($6.8k), and slb ($2k).

After the break with blinds up to $300/600 and a $50 ante, I raised the first hand on the button with A4o to $1775. Hoy came over the top of me and I laid down the hand, further hitting my stack now down to $5k. Laying down my blinds brought me to $4k with slb now under $1k at $975. slb moved all-in for his last $975 UTG, and I laid down A3o from the button. Good or bad? I didn’t want to double him up with a marginal hand and also didn’t want to get pushed by the other two players. I feel as though I played the hand tentatively, and with the other two calling the flop brought K33. Joe had JJ, and I assume he would have moved over the top if I’d called originally or if I’d tried to isolate. slb tripled up with K4o as his flopped pair of kings was good. I won a pot with pocket 8’s (uncontested), then slb won another race with AKo vs. hoy’s pocket 4’s to double up again. Now it looked like this: hoy ($18.5k), slb ($5.2k), Joe ($4.9k), and csquard ($4.3k). I won my bb uncontested, called my sb with K7o vs. Joe, never bet at a board of Jd-4d-10d-Qs (Joe bet $900 on turn and I laid down). After Joe doubled through hoy with AJo vs A5o, I was down to $3,650 to slb’s $4,000 with Joe comfortably at $9,340 and hoy at $16k. Joe took my bb when I had J3o, and I made a move from the sb with Js-8c. I misclicked the bet and left myself with $302, and Joe called. The flop came K96, I check/folded to his bet and he showed AKo. I then got AA UTG with only 1/2 a blind, and I moved from $302 to $956 with the pot. Hoy had 88, so I was kicking myself as he would have definitely called me had I laid down the sb hand pre-flop, which would brought me comfortably to $7k or so. I then picked up AA on the next hand with everyone calling, the aces holding up and bringing me to $3,518.

I lost $1k to my blinds then raised or won four consecutive hands to take the blinds with the following hands: Kh9h, QTo, T5s (uncontested bb), and KJo. I folded A6s UTG, 97s from the button, then took the bb uncontested with A7o. I raised UTG with 33 and took the next pot after folding my sb, and slb was down to $700. I folded from button with K7o, hoy went in with AKo vs. slb’s Q5o, and slb busted on the bubble in 4th.

Joe and I were even in chips until his QQ caught a set against hoy’s KK. That put me at a 2:1 chip deficit against both of them ($6k) with blinds at $400/800 and $50 antes. I blinded out from there with nothing better than the Qd-8d I went to the felt with vs Hoy’s A9o.

The major mistakes I made were the two hands I’ve described: the A7o raise/call vs. Joe’s AKo and the A3o laydown vs. slb’s baby stack. The A3o laydown isn’t as big a mistake, but I do think I played the hand tentatively. I felt good about finishing 3rd against a tough first table and a tough final table, although I felt the deck hit me a good bit early.

I like to think I’m fairly open to criticism and feedback, and if anyone has read this blog for any length, you know that I’m all about candor when it comes to my own difficulties and failings. That said, Steve/slb if you have any specific feedback that you’d like to provide me regarding my tournament play, I’m all ears. If you feel I have specific hands that you don’t like my play, please give me details and how you’d play them. If I play too loose or too tight early or late in an event, I’d welcome the input. Nothing I do at the table is an accident (unless it is an accident), so at the very least it would be interesting to hear your perspective regarding any matter.

Understand, though, that throwing around generalities isn’t constructive, and calling someone a moron may be easy to type, but when you speak about me then say that you can’t play with morons anymore; well, it’s directed at me. Is it offensive? Of course. Is it constructive? Obviously not. Is it representative? I hope not. Is it valid? No. Do you have an opinion regarding my play based on what you’ve witnessed? Possibly, and it is either accurate or reflective what what you’ve seen in the times we’ve played together.

I only play poker to enjoy myself and to compete, with the dollars being our report card for success and failure along with process metrics along the way to evaluate how we play. The blogger events are an opportunity for me to play, chat with people I’ve come to know and in some instances meet, and then test myself against many players I either respect or admire or both.

Now, one bit of advice back at you, and it is in regards to this part of your post yesterday: “I’ve experienced some extremely disappointing letdowns so far in poker, namely, the 2 outer I lost to just before the 3rd hour in the 200K that I won an entry into, but I’ve never lost sleep over any of them…until last night. Obviously, I’m still bothered by it.” If whatever happened to you or what you witnessed in the MATH Monday is the worst thing that has happened to you in poker, then my advice would be as follows: never play poker again. There will be normal variation in your results that will cause significant losing sessions during a short-term period. Unless you are playing at stakes with an adequate bankroll in the 700-1000x bb range (or 100-200x buy-in range), you are going to see so much worse in poker than anything that happened at the MATH.

I still don’t know the origin of the diatribe nor why it was directed at me. If I did anything that was offensive, I do apologize in advance but would like to know. If I delivered some tremendous bad beat somewhere, you can get in line behind hoy, change100, and others (scratch that, I probably did change worse than anyone with some truly horrible play at Caesar’s that may have damaged any possible friendship, although I’m still a bigtime fan).

And for anyone who can’t leave comments here, let me know and email me any thoughts at csquard@gmail.com. That’s it for now. Have a good Wednesday, and I’ll talk to you later.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 27th, 2006 at 12:33 am and is filed under Uncategorized.