Saturday at PKR

Our quarterly series of 13 tournaments culminated in yesterday’s freeroll at PKR. For those unfamiliar with the format, points are awarded based on one’s finish during each of the 12 “regular season” tournaments. The top ten in points get a seat at the week 13 tourney. As an incentive, the player who had the best attendance of those not in the top ten also got a seat. A portion of each entry, rebuy, and add-on during the regular season creates the prize pool, which this time was $2,662.

In the regular weekly tournaments we only get $3,000 in chips to begin with. Add to this the rebuys and add-ons, and you can end up with a lot of crazy play. Yesterday we started with $8,000 in chips, and there were no rebuys or add-ons. This obviously makes the flavor of the finals much different from the weekly tourneys, and allows for some actual poker to be played. That is, at least until the blinds shoot up to the moon!

As for me, I made a nice read and dodged a bullet (um, make that two bullets) early. I think it was the second hand of the tournament (blinds $25/50), and I’m UTG and look down at K-K. Several players have already shown a willingness to “follow the limper” and since it’s early, I decide to limp, then pop in a big raise and most likely take down the $300 or so that’s sure to be in there. Ideally someone will raise behind me, and I’ll scoop that money also. At any rate, I limp, and I think there’s one other limper, and Charles raises to $250. Ed calls behind him (sweet!), but then the small blind makes a min-raise to $500. I’ve never seen this guy before (he purchased a seat from one of the regulars who couldn’t make it), but a red flag immediately goes up. I can’t pinpoint exactly why, but every instinct I have tells me this guy has aces, and I actually think for a very brief second about folding pre-flop. I’ve folded kings pre-flop several times in tournaments, but each time it was after some kind of a raise/re-raise/all-in sequence. Re-raising is now out of the question in my mind. Since the additional $450 to me is only around 6% of my chip stack, I decide to call the bet, then reevaluate after the flop, since I’ll be acting after the small blind. Charles and Ed call as well, and we have a nice little pot brewing.

The flop comes 8-7-5 with two clubs - not exactly the A-K-K flop I’m looking for (lol). The small blind kind of surprises me by betting only $500, less than 25% of the pot. Could he have something like A-K suited? Whether he has A-K or A-A, this is a strange bet to me. There are two players to act behind me, and it’s a fairly coordinated flop, the kind that might have hit one of them. Players will often just smooth-call a raise or re-raise with a middle pair or suited connectors, hoping to spike a flop and bust a big pair. My gut tells me to fold, but my mind needs more information and says I’m now getting over 5:1 on my money, and I reluctantly toss in the call.

Clearly I listened to the wrong body part, as Charles immediately pushes all-in. The rest of us all fold, as he has obviously spiked his set. He turns up 8-8, Ed shows Q-Q, and small blind shows A-A. Wow, that could have really gotten ugly if the betting had gone differently! Though I could have maybe folded to the flop bet, I lost about as little as realistically possible in the hand. I don’t know about the other guys, but I was happy with the result!

The small blind made, in my opinion, a horrible play by only re-raising the minimum and inviting three other players to see the flop cheaply. Who knows what would have happened had he popped it $1,000 or so. I was also more than a little surprised that Charles would push in after flopping a monster. If you’re fairly sure someone has an overpair (pretty obvious here), then the only reason you would play a middle pair is for the implied odds when you hit a set, and he only got paid an additional $1,000 after the flop. I believe a nice raise of $1,500-2,000 (a little more than ½ the pot) was in order here, as this would have given drawing hands improper odds to call, and may have sucked in someone with a two-outer overpair. In his defense, I think he probably got hit with a flashback montage of all the “suck-outs” bestowed upon him throughout his poker life, and decided he needed to end it right there before another one came and put him over the edge. :-) And remember, this was PKR…

Anyway, the rest of the tournament was relatively uneventful for me. I did have a minor suck-out later (well, minor for me, since I had a big stack - major for him), when the new guy was all-in for only four times the big blind with K-K, and my Ad-10d outdrew him. I ended up getting heads-up with el Senor Jefe, and since we were almost exactly even in chips, I offered him a chop, which he accepted. All in all, not a bad day - nothing in, $965 out. I look forward to starting the “new season” next week. Hopefully I can improve on this past one!

See ya at the tables…
Rick