Scissor, Paper, Stone

It’s been a great performance. I have gone deep in the Scissor, Paper, Stone 110k USD guaranteed tournament, sponsored by MansionPoker.com. There are 23 gladiators left, and my next clash is with the Italian in seat 3. If I can win this clash, I can smell a big return. Sweat drips of my forehead as I elect for trusty paper, and prepare to go into battle. The Italian stares me down, and I pray to see the clenched fist of rock. No! He has gone against his previous form and produced the deadly scissors, and my dreams are over for another evening as I finish in 23rd place.

As you can guess, the structure of the Mansion Poker tournament I played in yesterday was a bit of a joke. 100 USD buy in (with rebuys), and 110k guaranteed, looked a tournament worth playing, so I joined 560 others in the pursuit of the 38k first prize. I eased up to 6k at the break without rebuys and after a few hours was hovering in about 40th place. Then, the hand that shot me up the leaderboard.

I am playing 40k with about 50 players left. UTG min raises to 1200 and is called in 2 spots. I decide to call in the BB with A♣6♦, knowing that I need to hit 2 pair at least to proceed with this hand, but getting great odds.

Flop 3c 4c 5c

Wow - that is some draw. Open ended straight, with nut flush draw as well as gutshot straight flush draw. Check, Check. UTG bets 5k, one of the limpers re-raises to 15k and I put him all in. I’m up against pocket Aces, but my hand is still marginal favourite at 55% and I end up hitting the 2c for the straight flush. Up to 100k and in with a great chance.

We get down to 23 players, and then I realise that there is now NO play left in the game. I am in about 13th spot with 90k in chips and I have less than ten big blinds! We are playing for a large first prize, yet now there is no poker left to be played in this tournament. I don’t know why people would choose this tournament structure over the nice slow structures at Ultimate and Full Tilt.

I guess some players don’t like seeing flops, and would rather find a spot pre-flop to get everything in and then leave it up to luck (let’s call them prefloppers). This is not the way poker should be played. The best part of the game occurs just after the flop, because this is when hand values have changed the most dramatically. There is a place for pushing all-in, and there is a place for re-stealing preflop, but it shouldn’t be the be all and end all of the game. TV popularity would soon dry up, if all we ever saw was AK v JJ all-in preflop. The classic race, as Honest Dave likes to call it.

Anyway, you can guess I’m bitter because I lost my coin flip ;) Italian “big stack” (15 big blinds) raises to 30k (blinds 5k/10k). I shove from the SB with pocket 8s for 95k and he calls off 70% of this stack with KQ. King comes first card out and I win $1k instead of having a shot at the big money.

I guess it was a good night - I placed about 16th in the Full Tilt 40k guaranteed to pick up some more cash, and also had a minor cash in a Pokerstars event. 3 cashes out of 6 can’t be sniffed at I suppose, and generated about 1.6k of tournament profit for the night.

My 1k to 100k cash challenge has also started promisingly. I added about $300 after the tournaments last night, so the bankroll for that stands at$1,800.

Dealers Choice at Loose Cannon tonight - bring on the 2-7 lowball ;)