Good Combination- Binks and Holidays
On Wednesday the 4th, I went out to my parents house to finish building my dad’s website Macarthur Auto Parts which for the most part is now done and to start my Easter holidays. On Thursday I chilled out with my brother Jacob and closed up my parents business as they had already headed up the coast (to a holiday house). On Friday morning Jacob and I headed up to Shoal Bay (next to Nelson Bay) to meet up with my parents, but we took a fairly large detour as he had a surprise for me…an addition of a new car (he wanted a Celica as a run around car to go with his BA typhoon which is definitely more of a Sunday drive).
We arrived late in the afternoon and went for a coffee and strolled along the bay. For dinner we had a prawn salad entree’ (I stole a few prawns to fry in butter, vinegar and lemon juice) and cooked an entire snapper which we filled with rice, onion and capsicum. A few beers and a movie later and it was time for bed.
The next day we went quad bike riding on the sand dunes which was fun, but left my legs very sore for basically an entire week… my plans of running ever day got put on hold. In the afternoon we found our way to “Murray’s” pub, with live music, good/diverse local brew and wood fired pizza’s. Unfortunately the music was a little loud for chatting to take place and we soon left to explore the area some more. We had a pretty low key afternoon and night, another good meal and a bottle of red and once again it was sleep time.
Easter morning soon arrived and the Easter bunny had made an appearance, after a chocolate (ferrero rocher) breakfast we headed to the beach for some sun n’ waves and to conclude this little adventure. We had fish and chips for lunch and then I drove back home to get plenty of sleep in before my Monday poker session.
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I woke up on Monday morning at 4-5am and regd everything till 12pm, I quickly found myself in a really good spot in a 109 turbo after getting a little lucky when my k9s bested ajo. My card quality was pretty solid as I ground through to the final table, with 18k for first my nerves and anticipation grew. We lost 1 player very quickly and most of the table was reasonably short stacked when I picked up ako, a player in early mid position shoved 12bbs and I called with a 13bb stack, he turned over a9s…I sweated out a flop with 2 cards of his suit to see brick brick and take down a huge pot and the chip lead. From this point on I stole blinds and stayed out of trouble. We got three handed and a mention of a deal came up, we looked at the numbers and made an agreement. As I had the chip lead I got 14,200 and the other two players got about 12,500
It was a pretty good feeling to have my first 5 figure score, come out of make-up and then go on to inevitably win the tournament for bragging rights. I took my room-mates out to lunch to celebrate. I spent the next few days with family assessing all my options and hanging out with my younger cousins (as it is school holidays and I must keep promises) playing ping pong, watching old James Bond movies and playing with dinosaurs.
A few days ago I came back home and am feeling refreshed and super keen to get my grind on.
Run Good
Poker
The last month has contained a lot of deep runs and big stacks but very little on the result front. A few weeks ago I had a really deep run in Sunday Millions, I was 3/30 and feeling really confidant. I got in a rough spot with aj and lost half my stack, I think I played the hand badly but if I had played a better line the result would have been the same as I would have flopped top pair and turned two pair up against a set of queens and still got stacked as my opponent only had 17bbs pre-flop, the money just would have hit the middle.
From this point on I ran well below average losing two flips with big suited aces against off-suit low cards and busted 25th.
On Saturday night (24/3/2012) I had a little win taking down a $5 hyper for $900 and coming 2nd in a 109 (non turbo) for $1600… I got into a pretty tough heads up battle where we both started 70bbs deep (opponent was a very aggressive 3 betting and 4 betting with really high frequencies, in the end I got coolered 40bb deep with kt on kqj where my opponent flopped broadway.
As usual I spent most of Sunday chilling out, pre-ping meals and getting my sleep in line for a big grind. So I woke up at 1am Monday morning and began my grind, I backed up my Saturday effort taking down a $51 hyper for 7.6, which is all about running good (I think I only won one really lucky pot on the final table turning the wheel with A4 against a dominating ace, i got a little excited when this occured). I also got pretty deep in Sunday millions but busted about 400th after an hour of things not really going my way and then running into a monster. With the score it ended up being a pretty good day
Best Abbs
About a month ago I decided I wanted to push myself to have the best abs I can possibly have so I laid down a pride bet with a friend for added incentive. I have upped my fitness routine (its basically just lots and lots of sit-ups and a few push-ups) and started running. I am trying to eat well and take supplements to help with recovery and mass building (protein shakes, creatine and amino acids) while keeping as lean as possible. I’ve always found running really hard, i never have problems with drive in most other areas of personal fitness but i guess i must enjoy this less then other activities…at the moment its just 3km ruun around the block most days but I’m looking to double that in the next month.
On a personal note
I’ve been doing a little bit of soul searching lately, deciding what I want from life and where I want to go. Overall I am pretty happy with my family, friends and lifestyle but in the end I know I will move away from poker, the variance and uncertainty is not something I want primarily in my life as it creates tension and a need to produce constant results/ run good (which is pressure both financially and mentally)… I’m not saying I don’t want to play or be involved in poker, quite the opposite is true. I would just prefer it to come second for a while, as I have found when I have less pressure my results and attitude are much better.
With this said im unsure what the future will hold for me but I enjoy adventures and learning so I can only see good things
A Week Off
Pokerstars gifted me the last week off poker by being extremely slow in dealing with my account issue (I could have gone down to Melbourne but decided not too), which was actually resolved while I was writing this article 
So what did I get up-to in the last week? well, I embraced my many many hobbies.
The first part of the week I got my basketball grind on watching several games on www.nba.com thanks to Jesse McKenzie (did you know you can 4 screen games). I don’t really have a favourite team- I usually pick teams that are playing well or that have particular star player’s I really enjoy watching. This season i’m a big fan of the Clippers (mostly because I like watching Griffin fly), Chicago (because they have a really deep team even without Derrick Rose, Carlos Boozer is playing awesomely) and the Heat (because they seem to be the best team overall). Last year I was a Laker’s man but I have been really disappointed with the gameplay, or more to say their all in Kobe strategy when Gasol and Bynum are actually playing really well.
After watching so many games I was keen to shoot some hoops. Ian Mejia, Gary Buckman, Aaron Wallis and Ashton Cartwright made this possible two days in a row, I currently suck at basketball and most of these guys played when they were kids and have actual skills. I have been slowly improving by watching and doing some drills (thank you youtube), I am a good shot but my ball handling skills are pretty limited which is especially apparent with my left hand.
I also got my magic the gathering grind on watching several players stream live play on tweet.tv including AJ Sacher, Brad Nelson and the Scg live feed with Fabiano and Chapin commentating. Streaming live games is a new thing for the magic community but I think it is really cool, Tom Martell put together this link to some of the best streams mtgpulse. I got excited and tried my hand in 3-4 ISD drafts. It is a format I have liked and had some real success in, typically drafting slow grindy control decks which has been officially named “durdling”. Despite having good draft decks could not seem to win a round, sometimes with variance and small skill edges this is the way.
There was a point at which I was watching 3 or 4 magic streams, drafting and watching 4 games of basketball. Poker really has taught me to multi table and multi screen game, I feel rather in-efficient when i dont!
On Thursday I watched some cardrunners videos and then did a coaching session for 180 man’s with Ian Majia, in his next session he preceded to win every game he played because he is a beast and his knowledge is now far superior to the average player in those fields. He rewarded me with a very unexpected gift, a brand new pair of air Jordan’s (my first basketball shoes!) and some cool basketball shorts. I now feel an obligation to learn to jam, youtube drills for life I guess. On a side note Ian has a sports advice tipping site which is pretty cool… dig deeper
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On Friday I meet up with my Mum and my Sister in law (Lorna) and had a fantastic lunch at the Jazz Apple cafe in Glenbrook, it reminded me of being in Glebe again with the style of food and easy going nature of the place, the cafe put up a strong finish with an amazing hot chocolate (i plan on sharing this place with some freinds). After lunch we explored Glenbrook and Lorna headed home, I went on with my Mum to sand sculptures in Windsor which were pretty awesome, they had a mythical theme….heres some snaps i took on my bad camera phone.
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Saturday night we did a going away party for Martin Kiss (Slovakian magic player who has lived in Australia for a few years and is moving to Thailand). Martin has two favourite pastimes, fighting and magic and we thought we would add alcohol to the mix. Somehow Martin didnt turn up (for unknown reasons) but we had many men ready to dual in cards and resolve issues with 16once gloves and ju-jitsu, it was a super fun night (credit goes to this awesome youtube clip “Don’t Drink and Draft”). The semi drunk fighting was interesting, my ju-jitsu held up as I won both my fights on the ground- standing was not as good for me as the two experienced stand up guys (boxer/kickboxer) had their way with my face, i need to learn to keep a better guard.
Sunday I rolled around playing Heroes of Might and Magic 6 (which is all about durdling), sleeping and being sore (from said fights) until I could start a Monday grind session on the tier 2 poker sites, Partypoker and Pacific poker. My Monday session was pretty break-even despite some deep runs and some high hopes
I’m imagining things will get back to normal this week as I got my stars account back and have now figured out Holdem Manager 2.
Peace Aaron
Short Stack Poker
I have seen many new players come and go and have had the privilege of trying to pass on some of my knowledge from time to time. The thing I like to teach primarily to new players is how to think (a systematic process to evaluate and adapt to specific situations). Poker is an evolving game and those who do not continue to grow and mould there game to fit the current meta-game end up failing or not succeeding as much as they intend to.
Recently my room-mate Ashton Cartwright has been working with some new players on tournaments and sitngo strategy, he has focused on teaching them correct shoving ranges using Jennifear charts- a chart which provides unexploitable shoving ranges under 20 big blinds(bbs) and chip accumulation. While I do agree that this is a good guideline for a new player to have as most sitngoes and online tournaments are played with short stacks under 20bbs it does not explain why you should not just shove all your chips in the middle when you have AA (the reason is you lose value/ you make less chips then you could by making other plays). It does not make a player aware of how certain plays look and how to induce or seem super strong with a weak hand.
I’m going to talk about unexploitable shoving ranges, an unexploitable range is a range of hands with which you can put all your chips in the middle and an opponent playing perfectly cannot counteract with a better then break-even result, this sounds great in theory so why is it not the best in practice?
The simple answer is exploitable shoving ranges can have a much higher yield, an unexploitable shoving range assumes your opponent is playing 100% mathematically correct which they never do. When your opponent makes errors you should look to take advantage of these errors and this will lead you to making plays which are not unexploitable, until an opponent takes advantage of you making a mathematical mistake by no longer being unexploitable the exploitable play you are using will be the most effective and most correct line of play to take.
From day 1 I want a player to think am I taking the best line (the best line is the positive/winning overall play) so that as they improve they get better with the tools to adapt, it is still completely necessary for them to understand unexploitable play so they have a guideline and know how to fall back in to line when it becomes necessary, i.e. they are being exploited.
Playing the chart compared to playing your hands, an explanation for a game under 20bbs. Using the jennifear chart the player is given a limited spectrum, where there are two options- shove or fold. In my opinion the game under 20bbs has evolved well past two options, im going to break this down into stack sizes; 20-15bbs, 15-12bb, 12-9bbs, 9bbs and under. Remember position/antes player tendencies etc are very reliant to the way certain amounts of big blinds play in specific spots, the jennifear charts help to show how your range widens as less players have to act after you as the average best hand strength of two opponents will be a lot less then the average best hand strength of 8 players.
Between 20-15bbs
Very few hands shove well, the reason for this is we represent a very thin range when we shove and this range is not usually super strong, it is in fact a mid range of semi strong hands. When we have strong, top hands like AA-JJ-AK-AQ-KQs-AJs (top 5%) it is common to open a small amount (like 2.1bbs) so that a player behind us can potentially pick up a hand not as good as ours (usually top 15% a mix of strong and semi-strong) and decide to shove, we can call positively with this range. If we were just to shove all hands that are positive to do so with we do disguise our best hands but we will only get called by the strongest of our opponents hands, basically the flip of what I just explained (instead of our range being stronger then our opponents shoving range, our shoving range is now weaker then our opponents calling range), we do make some of this up in stealing blinds and antes but it is not the best overall way.
This means with the top of our range we are inducing players to shove and we are showing strength by small raising. If a play that we make seems strong, then we should abuse it, to abuse our strong image we should also open sometimes with worse hands (like suited connectors), when we do this our intent is not to call of an opponents all in shove, but to steal the blinds or win the hand post-flop by either flopping a good hand or representing a good hand (usually when we have between 20-15 bbs we can take some risks in opening to try get back to a more comfortable stack size).
So our range for shoving 20/15bbs generally is hands not good enough to induce with but too good to fold, semi strong hands like KQo-KJs-JTs-TT-55 which have reasonable equity when called, the problem is we sometimes face up our play when we move all in, when your opponent knows what you are doing they can make a perfect response. That said sometimes an unexploitable shove with certain hands in certain positions can be the best option and best play, it does force your opponent to have a super strong hand or fold.
Re-shoving/ 3bet shoving (when an opponent raises and you decide to go all in for more then the raise), with 20-15bbs many opportunities will arise where an aggressive opponent opens from late position (hijack, cut-off or button) and we have a pretty good hand but cannot call profitably (Some hands like AT, KQ etc can call profitably in position). Hands with good equity like medium pocket pairs, suited connectors or strong hands that will be difficult to play post-flop are best suited for this job. We can shove pretty often in these spots as our opponent will have a hard time calling off our raise unless they have a very strong hand (which if they are aggressive should not be very often), in which case we have pretty good equity against them. Usually this play when successful and our opponent folds yields 5bb stack increase which is huge. Of note with a bigger stack then this these 3 bet all in plays are usually far less effective as they make you less chips as a percentage of your stack and lose you more chips when you are wrong and they do have a strong hand.
Between 15-12bbs
Your game should tighten up, you can open and induce with the top 5% (there is a program called Pokerstove which is good for showing hand percentage information) still but you will generally get a lot of respect (more then with 20-15bbs), you should limit your openings with average hands unless the spot is ideal (good position, tight players in blinds etc). However you can now begin to open shove more effectively as you win a larger percentage of your stack each time you get through (around 10%).
Sometimes with this stack size it is good to stay out of trouble and look for a good spot to re-shove, your goals at 15-12bbs should be similar to 20-15bbs but involves less risk taking to conserve a stack which can shove and re-shove effectively.
Between 12-9bbs
You should play a pretty tight game, look for good spots to shove (re-shoving will probably no longer work so only do this for value with premium hands). You can still open to induce but you will now be signalling very strongly that you have a top hand, at lower buyin games I would small raise to induce, at higher limits I would be more inclined to shove with all hands I wanted to play (this is a case of an exploitable play in a lower limit game being better then an unexploitable play that is better in a higher limit game).
9bbs and under
You have very few options, when I see players small raise with hands when they have this kind of stack size I usually find that they are weak and trying to create more fold equity for their hand. You could potentially look to do this with the strongest of hands but I think just shoving with all good hands at this point is pretty good. With blinds and antes usually winning an uncontested pot will increase your stack size by over 20% which is massive.
feel free to leave questions and comments
peace aaron
Hackers Gonna Hack
On Tuesday my hotmail email account was hacked into and the hacker tried to access my Pokerstars account. Fortunately I picked up the sent email really fast, have an RSA token and Pokerstars front line security is good enough to ensure they could not do much (my account was frozen on Tuesday 10/1/12). To fix the problem I needed to work out whether I had been key-logged and my computer was compromised or whether my email had just been hacked into, I went to http://forum.webuser.co.uk to ask for advice. They gave me a hand telling me which programs to download and what steps to take which I followed to a tee (Microsoft Essentials, Malwarebytes, Rogue killer, ccleaner), I changed all passwords on related email accounts and logged out of each individually. On Thursday (12/1/12) Pokerstars called me and reopened my account (giving me a temporary password to change upon reopening my account) and I put in a grind session.
After Pokerstars called me and opened up my account I was sent an email regarding everything that had taken place. Unfortunately for me the hacker still had access to my email and sent them a reply message saying the temporary password I was given did not work, they requested a new temporary password be sent to the email (I think Pokerstars froze my account at this point but it is possible a new temporary password was sent and my RSA token saved my account as most of the emails sent by the hacker and the replies were deleted). Upon realising this I sent an email to Pokerstars to call me immediately stating that the email account was compromised, Pokerstars called me soon after and told me that they thought both my computer and email were compromised.
To fix this I reformatted my computer and deleted all hotmail accounts and moved to gmail. I am now in the process of reopening my account and downloading software. There is some silver lining to this story, as far as I know the hacker got nothing apart from wasting a chunk of my time and making me change all account passwords and emails, when I reformatted my computer I upgraded from HEM1 to HEM 2, I am more aware and vigilant of potential threats and I have a new found respect for RSA token.
Its actually pretty ironic that I finished my last article with a 2012 goal to have “#5 zero situations involving shady people”. I guess in life we don’t get to pick which bad things happen and when but I will be glad to have this behind me. I hope no one else has to experience these problems in the future but I would strongly recommend every poker player get themselves an RSA token and look to take steps in protecting themselves (ive linked to most of the programs i used and think Microsoft Essentials and Malwareabytes are very well ‘essential’).
Hoping I’ll be back in the games real soon ‘nicastri’
Looking back on 2011 and into 2012
So 2011 began with me quiting my croupier job (for a second time) at The Star casino on the very first day of the new year. There were many reasons for this
#1 I had backing (+support and coaching) from David Saab -of note on David Saab, i meet him in October/November 2010 and was trailed by him in sitngoes, after he approved of my game he offered me staking, he was a top professional player from Melbourne
#2 I didn’t like the job
#3 You cant play at the casino your employed by it, and there is only one per state in Australia (states are pretty big in this country)
#4 I wanted to be a professional poker player and this time had the skill-set to make it happen
At the time i was grinding 50/$1 cash online, watching a lot of cardrunners videos and was doing fairly well (crushing low-med stakes home games). I really did hit the ground running and was absorbing information fast. Two weeks into the year i headed down to Melbourne with my previous city roommates Rhys Gould and Ryan Mckay + Jesse Mckenzie. I was in Melbourne with the purpose of wining 10k main event tickets, i had been working on icm spots and sitngo strat using sitngowizard primarily and due to the avg level of live players i was very confidant. On top of this i was there to clean up in some of the softer cash games.
In the satellites i pretty much broke even (i had a main event ticket which had cost me 10k in buy-ins and a lot of time), but i won a fair amount playing cash (almost 10k). So i entered the main event and after 6 or so hours of building i played a pot badly, lost way to many chips and soon found myself on the rail. Iwas about break even for the trip and by the end of day 1 of the main event all the group including David Saab had busted the main event.
We went out and had some drinks and then we all went our separate ways. The next day David Saab was arrested for drug importation!. The poker players who were lead by him were in shock, at the fact we did not have any knowledge of this and with the weight of the whole situation. It was a lot to handle, and now the support and coaching i had were gone amongst other major issues.
I headed back home to Sydney to re-evaluate (In this same period Jesse Mckenzie had his big anzpt score) and decided the reasons i had quit work still existed and most importantly #4 I wanted to be a professional poker player and had the skill-set to make it happen. With this in mind i played a lot at home games and online (got coaching from fooz- a cardrunners coach) while i waited the 3 month ex-employee cooling period before i was allowed to play at The Star. I began building a bankroll and as soon as i hit 3 months i was on the live felt playing pretty sharp.
Across the early mid part of the year i did very well on the cash tables making 30k in May and June but was under backing as the variance was to much for me to handle. In July i decided to move out of the city to (the outskirts of Sydney) live with my good friend Ashton Cartwright and grind tournaments with Jesse Mckenzie. I got more then i bargained for as i found the other two house members Pip Hun and Aaron Wallis to be great people to live with, they both have very different life experiences but are both willing to learn and share anything and everything.
The reason i moved out of the city was Jesse told me i should be playing tournaments and i wanted to follow his lead and learn from his experience, i also knew he was linked into many of the top Australian’s and i definitely think to be the best you must learn and be around the best. Also i figured if i was trying to be an online mtt grinder then all i needed was an net connection, living in the city is rather expensive and did not seem like a good choice while i tried to build. With that said i played some tournament on my own dime and had a instant big upswing, then a crushing downswing. I decided i would prefer to be backed and made arrangements to get in with the top guys.
I quickly met Brad Bower who is an excellent player from Dubbo (of all places), i was fortunate enough to get to spend a few days with him which involved as much golf as poker, i tried to soak up as much as i could quickly and really understand what made players guns in the mtt world. I also got to talk about goal setting and life in general as a professional poker player. On the last day i was in Dubbo a dinner was hosted by Matt Lindsay (one of Brad’s good friends/pretty awesome guy) and the local poker tournament organiser in the area, it was here that i meet Matt brown and Ben Agg, both well accomplished players. I felt things were heading down a good path at this point but was struggling to put runs on the board.
I spent October and November floating around, having some deep runs but not winning anything which for the most part is how mtts go. You lose and then you lose and then you lose a few more times, then you suddenly put it all together and win a tournament and those loses all go away rather quickly. I was pretty frustrated overall with tournaments as things had not really gone my way and i had been living off my savings. At the end of November through December things started to pick up and i finally had a few significant scores. I was now only in a really small amount of makeup going into 2012. At the end of the year i pushed through to supernova grinding out 18 man sitngoes.
I think 2011 was a big year for me on the learning front. I feel my mtt game is in a good spot moving into 2012… so what do i expect from poker in 2012
#1 to make money (maybe enough to leave staking and consider staking others myself)
#2 to play more volume then 2011, i think i should be able to achieve well over supernova in a year of grinding
#3 to regularly blog and coach players (in 2011 i did work with arietm, AddictionA, mattindahat, abnOx and iriveru16)
#4 learn from more good players (in 2011 i recieved coaching from fooz, Onthemac, Bazza88, Ben Agg, David Saab, Protential and Risk2Dupside)
#5 zero situations involving shady people
all that is left to say is good luck on the tables 2012 grinders
Crazy Brothers
So my brothers Jacob (left) and Tim (right) Nicastri are musicians and play together in their band “Gallucci”. I’m just listening to their new album “Click to Switch”and its official I’m a fan (check it out for yourself, its a free download). The cover art for this album is just to good for me not to share. If you want to know more about them head to diepunkdeath.blogspot.com/
Enjoi
December Supernova Quest
Heading into December i needed to clear 17500 vpps to make Supernaova for the year as i had only played about 8 months online this year (worth about $2000 in additional bonuses for 2012). My average monthly is usually around 7-10k vpps so this was a big ask in a month with Christmas, the Star summer series and family commitments. This goal was starting to seem well out of reach.
A few weeks before the end of the year i had a chat with Jesse McKenzie and Brad Bower who have helped me a lot. I needed 13000 points and they suggested that i grind 18 man 2 table tournaments so i decided to go for it.
With a few days left i was getting a bit hesitant about whether i could actually put in the volume. On the 29th of December i needed to make 6.3k more vpps which roughly meant 150+ games per day for the last 3 days, i decided to push hard and bring it home as it would be rather disappointing to get so close and miss.
At 10pm on new years eve i hit my goal, i played 1093 18 man sitngoes. Overall i played 1440 online games 3 live tournaments (all of which i busted in) at the Star for the month and had two 5k plus scores in 109 turbos.
I just recieved this email and was completly unaware
Hello nicastri,
Congratulations on your performance in last week’s Sit & Go Leader Boards. A cash prize of USD 80.00 has been credited to your account. This credit can be viewed under the History section on the PokerStars Cashier.
Anyways, i’ve decided to take a few days off in the new year and get my mind back in the right place after a pretty full on grind. I am glad i put in a big effort and ground out enough to get my pretty Supernova red stars for 2012
The Blog Move
Recently i’ve been working on some sites and becoming familiar with WordPress. Inspired a little by my roommate Ashton Cartwright and by ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income
So i decided to move my blog here for the following reasons;
1# I wanted to change my domain from nicastripoker.blogspot.com to aaronnicastri.com
2# WordPress provides more flexibility and potential growth
3# It seems silly to use both WordPress and blogger
Im hoping to become a more active and better blogger and i think this is a good platform for me to do it
A Blended Grind
Had an interesting week of poker.
Both this Monday (5/12) and last Monday (28/11) I’ve had decent 5k+ scores in online mtts (this is not exactly what it seems because usually you win one tournament or do well in one and lose all the others) they were still both significant scores though
which is nice, the path to get to this point though has been pretty rough and very very swingy. Sharkscope says I’m back in the positive for scheduled tourneys but i think it lies about rebuy tournaments and so is far from accurate.
On Thursday night i played a little bit of heads up in Jesse Mckenzie’s home games holding my own with a solid player and then stacking Micheal Arietm as he joined us for a 3 player cash bonanza. After this i headed to the city to chill with Rhys Gould and play some magic online.
I played some live 5/10 and 10/20 cash on Friday and Saturday nights, got there twice when it was necessary and just played pretty solid straightforward poker which is all that really needs to be done in live passive fields where the overlay and skill edge is significant.
On Sunday the 4th i played the 1k nlh event at ‘The Star’ which had 108 entrees. My opening table was one of the tougher ones but the other good players (Brendon Rubie etc) seemed to die off. Rhys Gould came to my table with almost no chips, doubled up and then got stacked a few hands later as one of the regs Danny predicted. Alek Smith showed up and immediately got in a 6 bet war then proceeded to run over the table with a combination of aggression and big pocket pairs.
I soon got moved tables and watched my friend Nick Polias run into a monster with 88 and then found myself in a tough spot, i opened with ato utg (had a semi loose image) the table folded to the sb who min raised with 16bbs (an amateur), the bb called (also an amateur player) and i called. The flop came a25 the sb lead for 4k the bb folded and i called, the turn came a queen and sb led for 9k with 15 behind, i tanked and decided to call and fold to any river action if the board did not change. The river repeated the 5 and the sb shoved. Based on his play i didn’t expect him to ever have ak and rarely have aq (i thought his most likely holding was aj)as i expected he would have shoved pre flop with these hands and his stack size eventually i called and he turned over qq and scooped a big pot.
Back to 10bb i ground away and doubled up with JJ. We soon moved tables and only 40 players were left. I sat on the right side of a pretty adventurous Sydney regular, Tolly. My table overall was pretty tight and i found a few spots to pick up chips. I was up to 30bb as some new players moved to our table. One of the new players to the table came into the cutoff and when folded to opened to 3k @ 600/1200 200ante(from a 50bb stack), in the sb i decided to 3 bet him with kjs to 8k he called. Flop came a52rainbow (1 card to my suit) and i made a half pot continuation bet, the new player called. The turn was a queen which helped my hand a little, the pot had gotten pretty big roughly 34k and i had 24kish left, i decided this was a good opportunity to pick up a big pot I shoved and was called.
Usually this would be super super bad for me. To my amazement my opponent turned over q4s for 2nd pair and a gutshot, i had 7 outs as opposed to the 4 i expected i would have when called unfortunately i missed them all. My opponent played pretty interestingly in this hand calling a 3 bet with a really bad hand, calling a flop bet on an ace high board with only a gutshot and then calling a turn shove in this spot. I want my opponents to play badly so even though things did not go my way i was pretty happy with the tournament and how i played.
So in the last week i have played lots of online tourneys, heads up cash, big live games and a 1k livament.
Officially poker’d out for at least the rest of the night