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"Start as you mean to continue", that's how the old proverb goes anyway. Unfortunately, I've never been a person for this whole clean living malarkey, but only getting two hours sleep the night before the Celtic Poker Tour grand final was a bit extreme, even by my standards. I actually had intended to be well rested, but as it turned out Friday night had different plans for me. Nevertheless, I found myself at The Park Hotel in Clonmel at 2:45pm on Saturday - 15 minutes before kick-off.
The Celtic Poker Tour has always been something of an enigma to me. I had never played an event organized by these guys and wasn't really sure what to expect. My doubts were quickly dispersed when I entered the tournament area.
It was as professional a set-up as any event I have played on the Irish calendar. Everything from the quality of the dealers, to the structure of the tournament itself, was nothing short of fantastic. I quickly coughed up my €550 to register and drew seat 4 on my starting table. For an initial 'buy in' fee, I received a 10k stack but in an unusual (but very interesting) twist, you could have one rebuy/add-on of 15k for €200. I took my seat and the cards quickly started flying.
My starting table was like something from a fairytale. Up until now, I would always give an unknown opponent the benefit of the doubt and consider him to be a solid thinking player, until proven otherwise. Fortunately, for this weekend only, I left that notion back in Cork. Some of the play I saw was just amazing and it was only 30 minutes before I spotted what must be a "tell" that 5 of the players at my table were prone to giving off. As rudimentary as it sounds, the players in question started telegraphing the strength of their made hands, through the size of their bets.
For example, on the river, I found them betting 1/5th pot with for example, 4th pair and 2x pot with the nuts. Using this fairly basic info, I took to 3-betting preflop, floating flops and leading turns and of course my favourite against this type of player, check-raising the river. I was able to accumulate a decent stack within the first few hours and by the end of Day 1, I had 186k and with the average at nearer 45k, I was installed as one of the chip leaders. I enjoyed a couple of nightcaps with Sideshow and Nicky Power in the bar and it was off to bed for me!
I must say my second day started quite well. I was able to use my large stack to put my opponents under constant pressure and gather some more chips to add to my stock. I played a few small races and won maybe two out of four. Everything was going to plan, that is until I was devastated by the news that my table was to be broken. I was moved to a table with eight players, whom I had never seen before and would need to rebuild my image quickly.
A big part of my game is what we call, "balancing your range". One of the key things one must learn in poker is to put your opponent on a range of hands and figure out what is the best line to take against this range as a whole. We have to assume that our opponents are aware of this and are putting us on a range every time we play a pot so the challenge is to balance your range, which helps to create a strategy that is difficult to play against. By playing your strong, medium and weak hands on certain flop textures in a similar manner, you attempt to disguise your actual hand while extracting the most value overall from each hand type.
About an hour after moving to the table, the first really interesting hand of the tournament arrived.
I raised in early position with TT, but got re-raised by the button who was the only other player playing a big stack. He was also the only player at the table that demonstrated that he could play well, so I wasn't too keen on even playing this pot with him, but I decided to peel a flop and proceed with caution. I checked a 79J flop to him and he quickly bet the pot. Many of you might think folding is the best option here but the truth is, if you want to win tournaments, you'll never do it by constantly putting cards into the muck.
I decided to "float" the flop (calling with the intention of making a play on a later street), so I called his bet. The turn was a total blank (say, a 5) and I checked to him again. He instantly fired out a pot-sized bet. I considered this blank card on the turn to be great for me, as I can now represent a strong made hand that was trapping on the flop. I took my time and raised enough to put him all in.
As soon as I moved the chips across the line, I could see him almost getting sick! In my own head, I have polarized his range to exactly AA, KK and QQ and am playing in this way only because I considered him the only other player at the table who would be good enough to get away from these hands. He paused for what seemed like forever and eventually passed. A little later, he told me he had QQ, which I 100% believe. These plays are far more complex than what your typical recreational player would be advised to utilize, so it should be used with caution and it is vital that you know your opponent well enough that he can fold a hand.
I continued adding to my stack throughout the next few hours until I had a bit of a setback, when I ran QQ from the BB into AA. This cost me about 40% of my stack, but it showed me how much I have matured as a player. Two years ago, I would have gone on crazy monkey-tilt had this happened. However this time, I just took a deep breath, said "nice hand" and moved on to the next one. With 18 players left, I assumed the chip lead again and never really looked back. We lost nine players quite quickly and all of a sudden found ourselves at the final table and competing for the €40,000 top prize.
I got a great seat draw (immediately to the left of the other big stack) and possessing 1.1 million of the 5 million in play, I was confident that I could take this down. I won one big race to knock out the 5th place finisher when my AK beat his 55. All of a sudden we were 3-handed and as I had been playing reasonably tight, decided that now was a good time to change gears.
I raised five pots in a row; taking four uncontested with a continuation bet taking down the fifth. Going for six in a row, I looked down at KK. While it is fortunate that I picked up such a big hand at such a crucial time, it does serve as a good example of what I talked about earlier - balancing your own range to help conceal good hands. I raised again to the same figure as I had the five pots previous and the guy in the BB (who was obviously tilting over the fact that I keep raising) pushed all-in which I 'insta-called'. He tabled TJ and my KK held up.
Going into the heads-up battle, I had about 3.6 million to his 1.4 million. I chipped away at his stack over about 30 hands or so before we got the money in the middle pre-flop, when he raised from the button and I 3-bet him all-in with AJ suited. He paused before calling me with AT. The board ran out 2A6TJ, I shook his hand and collected my cash and ridiculously oversized trophy. Once again, I tip my hat to Mike Foley and the crew at CPT and wish them every success in the future. I'm going to take next weekend off and I'll be back for the Lakes of Killarney festival. See you there!
Kieran
Comments (11)
And why am I not one of your top friends?? Oh well. It sounded like fun out there. Hope your going good. Take care.,