Official EFOP Series report
(Image scans of tournament entry tickets are in the duplicate report posted on the Gutshot forum because I couldn't work out how to attach them in this post.
http://www.gutshot.com/forum/showthr...132#post317132)
I arrived at my hotel three hours before the start of the €250 H.O.R.S.E, so had plenty of time to relax and get something to eat before heading to the venue.
The Aviation Club de France is surrounded by much history and mystique so I was interested to see what it was really like. On google maps it appeared as being on the junction of Rue Washington and Avenue des Champs-Élysées but in reality it is right on the main street front of the Champs-Élysées, a short distance from l'Arc de Triomphe.
The club is grandiose and reminiscent inside of the old fashioned opulence and décor of a White Star Line cruise ship. Unfortunately my tournament hopes would ultimately sink like the Titanic.
The total floor space in the club as a whole is large but like the inside of a cruise ship the layout includes a few bottlenecked areas and narrow corridors which combined with the mainly dark polished wooden fixtures and fittings and the art nouveau styling and décor makes it feel cramped and claustrophobic.
These are not the best conditions for tournament poker and during the breaks the main bottleneck that connects the reception area to the cash game and tournament tables and to the poker cashier's cage was choc-a-bloc. It was also the devil's own job to get the attention of a waiter or waitress to get a drink and when you eventually did sometimes the drink would never arrive, and there were no water machines to tide you over in these circumstances.
The restaurant, bar and casino game areas of the club are more spacious but the area designated for poker has been outgrown by the player volume. There is also an inadequate number of toilets for the player numbers.
I tried a couple of dishes from the restaurant and found them to be over-rated and over-priced. The oriental chicken noodles I had were described as vermicelle on the menu (worm like noodles) but arrived as a stuck together glutinous mess of thick over cooked Japanese rice noodles. The chicken pieces were of a multitude of irregular shapes and sizes and the green vegetables tossed into it were undercooked. It also took an hour to arrive. You know you are in trouble when the waiter brings you a bread roll after 30 minutes. It was €15 and maybe worth €4.
Yes prices are sky high in and around the Champs-Élysées but this dish was an awful effort that couldn't have been much worse. I didn't complain and ate the edible parts and they did voluntarily refund my money, for the lateness not for the poor quality of food.
€250 H.O.R.S.E. January 22nd 2012
20th of 62, €0, Rating 7.5/10.
I couldn't win a pot for the first 3 levels, bricking some big draws. E.g. nut straight and nut flush draw in a 5 way Omaha Hi Lo pot when others are chasing the low, and a flush and low combo draw in Stud Hi Lo. I just couldn't hit any draws at all so my starting stack went from 10K down to 5K.
But I was playing really well and it was obvious that at least half of the table were weak on many of the games, particularly the three stud games.
Joe Beevers made a blog that mentions the H.O.R.S.E. comp in it. He was two seats to my right.
http://www.thehendonmob.com/joe_beev...la_acf_part_un
The variance started to flatten out for me and I got my stack up to 15K without really breaking a sweat but just by playing the correct starting hands properly.
I eased further up to 18K but then a dealer error cost me a potentially big pot when he exposed a bink card for me and the replacement card dealt was no good for my hand.
I started to not get many playable hands again and my stack went back to 11K with 40 of 62 players left.
I then started to get some decent hands and began to dominate, particularly in Razz where I got the whole of someone's stack.
With 30 left, 8 paid and €4K up top, I was amongst the chip leaders with 36K, was the big stack on my table and to all intents and purposes was dominating play on my table.
Then I made a huge error. I was later to realise, during the cash games, that the game plaques at ACF for many of the non Hold'em games have a number on them signifying the number of cards dealt. E.g. 5 card PLO has a plaque inscribed “5 Omaha”.
Being perhaps too deep in concentration and too in the zone my mind convinced itself that the plaque that was currently showing “7 Stud” and therefore the game we were playing was Stud Hi Lo. My mind subconsciously read it as Stud 8 which is a name for Stud Hi Lo.
The actual plaque for Stud Hi Lo was inscribed “7 Hi Lo”. Up until this point I had had no difficulty differentiating between the two plaques but my focus on the tournament was so intense that my mind saw the “7” and auto translated it into “7 Hi Lo”.
Consequently I was going ballistic betting and raising my holding of A3468 with 3 hearts against my opponent's board on which with he could not possibly make a “low”. I put him on a pair underneath, which was what he turned out to have, and was betting to either push him off his weakish high or to inflate the pot for what was a possible free roll to the high for me.
He was hesitant throughout the pot and dwell called my bet on 7th. He showed 2 pair, jacks up. I had paired my ace on 6th so in fact was quite live on 7th.
When it became apparent that this was high only I wanted to crawl under a stone and die. The rest of the table were more surprised than they were making fun of my error. I tried to laugh it off to hide my embarrassment and then I looked at my stack and realised that I still had about the average so would have to fight back albeit in an almost back to square one way.
Blinds/bring ins/bet sizes were now of course much bigger. I went card dead and drifted down to 11k in level 14 with 20 runners left and the average at 31k. I managed to get it AIP HU with 7k of bonus dead money in the middle, with AA68ss against another short stack's A236ss but he scooped me.
So really disappointed that one game misidentification error, for which there were some mitigating circumstances, cost me the chance of a high finish in a comp where my edge was substantial.
Here is the link to the official results
http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/event.php?a=r&n=61829 and here is an image of the tournament structure sheet. I haven't got the entry ticket because the dealer took it from me.
€50 PLO Sat to the €1K PLO January 23rd 2012
Approx, 30th of 50, €0, Rating 8/10.
This was unlimited re-buys to the end of level 4 plus one add on. The re-buys were 1500 chips and the add on 3000.
I had a maximum budget of €250. Looking at and profiling the players at the table I determined that they were value so thought my best strategy was to do up to two double re-buys plus the add on.
So I have 3000 chips to start with at 25/50 and the levels are 15 minutes. As I had suspected the table was soft, with players doing stupid things with their chips and immediately reaching for cash and shouting “re-buy” in a French accent.
I played well winning every pot that I was in and got up to 12K and the chip lead by the end of level 2. During the next 2 levels I saw very few playable hands and by the time of the add on period I was down to 9K but still healthy. I took the add on, meaning a total of €150 spent, to restore my stack to 12K.
I believe but am not 100% sure that there were 50 runners and 9 seats awarded meaning that the average spend was roughly €200 and that the average stack taking into account maybe 5 players busting was 8.5K after the add on.
The TD was a heavily pregnant lady who was juggling TDing this sat with another comp and who was also running around arranging the re-buys etc.
She didn't update the tournament screen display. I politely asked her to a couple of times but didn't push it after this because of her physical condition and the obvious pressure that she was under.
So my stack is okay and it crossed my mind to semi-ladder and tighten up a bit. On reflection this would have been a more +EV strategy than the one I pursued.
Because I was high on confidence, perhaps over confident, I carried on playing aggressively thinking that I could build a big stack and then do some semi-laddering. This didn't work out. Blinds were now 200/400 and I lost two flips, chips in on the flop each for about 5K of my stack, and was out in roughly 30th.
Of course I couldn't have exclusively played super TAG and laddered my way from 45 players down to 9 but I did get the satellite strategy balance that is required between laddering and chip stack building wrong.
There is no official result listed for this satellite but here is my first re-buy slip (that I took from hand one) and my add on slip that says “re-buy” but was an add on. Again, the dealer took my initial entry slip from me.
Cash game session 1
I had read a report on the Gutshot forum from a player I know about how loose and fishy the cash games were there. He had played some €2/€4 NLHE against some bad players a few days earlier but had run bad. I said to him that if the games were that soft that short stacking in the PLO cash games would have a big edge.
Well PLO is my game so I decided after busting the PLO sat to play the €5/€10 PLO. The game is a bit above my usual or preferred stakes but was the smallest PLO game available. I decided to sit with the minimum of €500 with two extra €500 bullets in my pocket and to play super TAG in this 9 handed game. The hourly table charge was a whopping €40 per hour but I figured I could justify this if the games really were so good to play in.
The standard was indeed awful and within 40 minutes I had €2100 in my stack from my first bullet.
All sorts of other crazy size stacks were at the table going right up to €10K and players were just not folding so I decided that €1600 was a very tidy profit and stood up.
I put my name on the €2/€4 PLO list and the €5/€5 Pot Limit Dealers Choice list but neither of these games ever started, nor did they ever start during my whole 4 days at the club.
I had a long and friendly chat with Joe Beevers while we were waiting and I think he was impressed in the €5/€10 PLO game we had both just been in when I check snapped called a €400 river bet when I worked out that the villain was repping a higher straight than mine when I knew after the turn action that he had a set.
So I decided to play some €2/€4 NLHE cash. After a shaky start when I lost my whole €200 buy in 4 betting all in with AK against a 3 bet of €40 against 99 I re-bought and left 3 hours later having ground my way up to a net €2/€4 NLHE profit of €200 and a net evening cash game profit of €1800.
Kind of a bad beat for tournament backers that I hadn't won in the comps but had won in cash games, but a good confidence and monetary boost for me going into the next day's €1K PLO comp.
€1000 PLO January 24th 2012
76th of 111 runners, €0, Rating 8.5/10
I sat down in this comp incredibly focused and determined to do well. I pre planned that I would take the same amount of thinking time on each and every decision including pre flop, excepting if I occasionally needed a lot more time on a big turn or river decision.
During all hands I was in I sat motionless with palms down on the table in front of me and wearing my blacked out sunglasses. I think this gave off a scary table demeanour and literally from hand 1 it tilted a middle aged French guy who was mumbling and muttering under his breath about it as well as openly complaining about it to his friend who was also seated at the table.
This was a 5000 chip triple chance with a 45 minute clock and blinds starting at 25/25.
I decided that the best strategy was to play as many pots as possible with playable starting hands with my first 5000 to try to build a big stack early and then if it didn't work out to take the 10000 remaining chips in one go and play more of a TAG style to re-establish myself.
This is basically what happened. I played well enough but my initial 5000 went down to 2200 then back up to 6000 then eventually busted. The standard at the table was mostly weak apart from 1 or 2 players who were competent but not special. I lost a couple of pots like this.....
Raised in the CO with 779Qds. Board comes 456rb. Checked to me, I bet the pot, he calls. T turn 5 river. Checked all the way down. He shows A2JJrb. I made a misread on a player who I thought was raising me with the bare ace of clubs and paid him off with the Q high flush. He had played his hand a bit weird on the flop which fooled me.
Other than that in the first 5000 chip chance I played some good stuff and gave myself a chance of building a big stack early without jeopardising my overall chances too much if it went wrong.
So I took my 10000 chips.
I won a few small pots and got back up to 15K. It's now the end of level 3, we have a 15 minute break and when we return blinds are 75/150. 104 players remain, the average is 16K and first prize confirmed as €25K.
Things didn't go for me after the break. I went very card dead. Then I lost a 7K pot when I raised a weak lead on the turn HU with top two and an up and down on a flushing board. He peeled, the flush came, and he bet the pot. I had to pass.
Shortly afterwards a player was moved to our table, one to my right. I have since learned that this is him
http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=214757
http://www.pokerstarsblog.com/belgia...es-089452.html
He arrived with 15K, I think as a late registering player, and immediately started to run like god and was now on 45K. I hadn't yet been in a pot with him but with my stack now on 10.5K and blinds 100/200 I ended up getting my whole stack in with him on the flop and being busted.
There was one limper pre, he limped and I made it 700 with AQT8DS. There are 4 callers including him. Flop is K98 (two spades, I have nut spades) It is checked to him and he bets 2400 into a pot of 3100. I shove with my remaining 10K of chips. He calls with a set of Kings. The turn gives me some extra straight outs but the river bricks and I am out.
I don't think I did anything wrong in this comp. It just wasn't my day as far as the run of the cards went and I think I would have had a very good chance of a top finish had I got myself towards the business end of the comp.
Cash game session 2
Having busted the comp I went and played some €5/€10 PLO cash again.
Having seen how soft the games were I decided to sit with €2000 which was basically the roll I had from the €500 buy in I had made the previous day.
I got my stack up to €2.7K. The table was crazy and it was costing €80 to €200 much of the time to see a flop. I should mention that most hands were 5 card PLO, the dealer BTN nominating 4 or 5 cards.
I was dealt QQJJ8DS and after a straddle and some wild pre flop raising it came back around to me as €360 to see a flop. I called the €360. An Austrian to my left (€5K) then potted it. Two other players went all in. I decided that I couldn't pass.
I won the pot with a flush. It was a €9K pot, the biggest I have ever won in my life.
On my 2plus2 biog it says, “About SageDonkey: Biography
Highly analytical, like to play optimal with moves thrown in. I never play with scared money so don't try to bluff me dawg
or to push me out pre.”
The Austrian did have AAxxx (the xxx not being very pretty) but I bet he wishes now that he had read my biog and had flatted me. It would have saved him €2.5K. The equities are much closer in 5 card than in 4 card so whilst his hand is still a favourite it is only a small one and I am just not folding pre with such a strong hand as mine in 5 card. If I intend to pass pre then I don't call the €360 in the first place.
So with €8K in front of me I now have visions of destroying the whole table and of maybe leaving with €50K. I am effectively in for €500 so I will give it a try.
However, a few hands later with QQxxx in a €250 pot pre the flop came JJA. It was 3 way, me, the Austrian and one other. We all checked. The turn was a Q, I bet €200 and he flatted. The river was a K. I checked and he bet €600. I thought long and hard. It's difficult to put him on KK or AA here so he has to have either AJ or JJ. Because I thought he might be tilting from the €9K pot I made the call and was shown quad Jacks. This was €1K lost and my stack down to €8K.
Meanwhile the player to my right who was an unkempt local PLO gambler was playing badly and definitely on tilt. He was there at the time that I joined the table and I had already seen him do two €2K buy ins during my stay including one in the €9K pot I won where he showed down something like Q9632 with three in the same suit.
After dropping his 2nd €2K he angrily snatched a €5K chip from his wallet and dropped it on to the table. He then lost €2K of it in a very short time, leaving him on about €3K.
I then played a big pot with him, which I lost. The pot was €800 going to the flop and 4 way. I was on the BTN with K3456 (two hearts). The board came K24 with two hearts. Two players checked, he bet €600, I potted it and he called. We agreed to run it twice, which is something that is routinely allowed at ACF in big PLO cash games.
We then agreed to reveal our hands. He had top set with no hearts. The first run housed him up on the turn and the second one bricked both turn and river so I lost a €7K pot and my stack was down to €4500. Variance is variance, so I was more disappointed about my dream of being able to get up to €50K in chips now being likely shattered than I was disappointed in losing the pot itself.
But I decided to stay because it was still a good game. Not long after this I flopped top set of Kings against a really old man and I trapped him by checking the flop on a board that was very dry apart from a flush draw to which I had one blocker.
He potted it and I flatted it. The turn was a brick. I checked again almost certain that he would bet again, either with a flush draw or maybe middle or bottom set. He potted again and I put him all in.
He had bottom set and I won a €6K pot taking my stack back up to €7.5K. Pots were now getting bigger and bigger and bigger pre flop so I decided to stand up with my €7.5K on the basis that my chance to destroy the table, had I won the pot when I had the K3456, had probably passed me by and that now to stay on and play would be too risky.
I enquired about the club rule regarding going back to the same game and how long you had to wait before returning with a smaller stack than you left with. I was told 1 hour. I said you mean just like on the Internet? He responded “yes”.
Whilst waiting I had a friendly chat with Joe Beevers while we were waiting for 5/10 seating and I think he was impressed in the game that we had both been in when I check snapped called a €400 river bet when I worked out that the villain was repping a higher straight than mine when I knew after the turn action that he had a set.
There were three €5/€10 PLO cash games running and a big list and after 3 hours of waiting my name came up and I got a seat on a newly formed table. I bought in for €500. Again there were a couple of bad players at the table and after about an hour and a half I had €1500 in front of me from my original €500 buy in. The bad players were short stackers and there were a couple of good players who had position on me, one of whom I saw playing later on in a €50/€100 PLO with €20K in front of him. So I stood up happy with my extra €1K profit.
Cash game session 3
This was the following day and would have been day 2 of the €1K PLO had I made it.
It was the last day that I could play because I had to check out of my hotel at 11 a.m. the following day and catch the Eurostar home.
I arrived at 8 p.m. with the intention of playing a little €2/€4 NLHE so to protect the big profits that I had made in the €5/€10 PLO. (as poker players reading this you will already know that this is not what happened!)
The game was friendly and sociable and the standard of play seemed okay, if not brilliant. I ground my way to a tiny €30 profit. Then this hand happened with Robert “Le Dangereux” Cohen. It was an interesting hand so I posted a wwyd? about it on the Gutshot forum.
http://www.gutshot.com/forum/showthr...129#post317129
Shortly after that hand I lost €140 in an AIP flip. I had the feeling that I wasn't playing very well so I left the game.
I then noticed that there was a €750 satellite to the €5K ME. I thought to myself, well, I am here in Paris, I have made a lot of Euros in the cash games so why not give it a go? I know I am not the best at NLHE MTTs, especially deep stacked, but I am good at shorter stacked faster structured NLHE MTTs and I decided that should I win a seat I would play fearless aggressive poker in the ME as this would be my best chance.
I was a very late entry into the €750 sat but this I didn't mind because I am good at pre flop hand ranges etc. and pre flop play generally.
I joined it at at level 5. Stack was 12K, blinds 200/400/50 and average 16K, 10 seats awarded from 70 runners. I didn't do anything wrong and played a good sat strategy but after getting quickly up to 16K in my first level I became utterly card dead and didn't find any spots either where I could 3 bet rep or 3 bet shove with a suited connector type hand or anything like that. In the end I had no choice but to drift down to 1/4 of the average when about 30 players left because the best hand I saw before then was A3o UTG+1 which I don't think is a good open shove with an M of 7 nine handed.
It was folded around to me and I found 44 on the BTN but the SB had QQ so GG. As I said, I was having a go with some cash game money won so I am glad I at least gave it a shot and I would have played fearlessly in the ME had I won a seat.
One player at my table and who won a seat was Ben Warrington. I had never met him or played against him before. He was very, very impressive. So watch out for him and back him IMO. I know that he sells on 2plus2 some times and I had a quick chat with him after he won his seat and I think he might be a superstar in the making.
http://www.benwarrington.com/
http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=103947
having busted the ME sat I probably should have left the club at this point, but I didn't............
I put my name on the €5/$10 PLO list and got a seat pretty quickly.
I immediately recognised that the line ups were nothing like as soft as on the previous days. Loads of Finns, most of which had arrived for the ME. I had 3 of them on my table for 4 hours. Also on my table were 2 other players who were very good and who had been there playing PLO cash all week.
There were three softish spots. 2 French Chinese players who were friends. They could both play ABC but were basically punters with lots of cash. One of them was wearing a 100K watch and the other one from time to time took €5K chips out of his pocket and pretended with a joke and a smile to place them in play. Neither of them were good players and they were the only value at the table.
Because of the presence of the 3 Finns and the two other pros this game was not easy. I sat down with €1K and my stack moved around several times between €500 and €1400. Paying €40 per hour table charge also doesn't help much in a game where there is little of no edge.
After 6 or 7 hours the three Finns, the best one of which was about €3K up stood up and said “good night, we are finished”. I replied, “don't you mean you are Finnish?” They laughed and left.
This left the game three handed. The slightly better of the two Chinese, plus a player who already had his chips in his rack ready to leave, and a newly seated player who didn't want to play so short handed.
My stack was bang on the €1K that I had started with. The Chinese guy I think as a joke said “heads up”. I agreed because I was pretty sure that he wouldn't know how to play HU PLO very well. I was proven to be right about this.
Hi stack was €1800. We paid the €40 table charge each and started HU play as an agreed €10/€20 game all at 5 card PLO.
I had an instant edge over him. He made the mistake of limping his BTN too often. He was annoyed that I passed some of the time on the BTN, he never passed it, he limped most of the time and occasionally raised. He never once 3 bet my BTN raise and he always flatted my BTN raises.
Recognising that he always called I made my BTN raise a standard size of €40 to ensure that I would be playing some nice sized pots with him from position. I think I would have lost him pre a few times had I raised bigger.
He hated it when I checked dark pre flop and never checked dark himself. And he check folded to a few of my half pot sized C bets that I made on paired boards that I had missed.
All of this small ball positional stuff that I was using was annoying and confusing him and it took my stack up to €1400 without there being any pots bigger than €160.
Then this happened.....................................
He raised on the BTN to €50.
I have 45678 with one suit. I flat.
Flop comes 348rb. I bet €80, he calls.
Turn is another 8. Pot now $260.
I check, he bets the pot, I re-pot and all the money goes in.
He asks me if I want to run it once or twice. Once is better here for me because if he needs a 3 for quads or to hit one of his kickers to make a better 8 house then why give him two cards to hit and to chop the pot.
The river is dealt with me all in and €2.8K in the middle. It's a 9 and he wins with KQ98x.
I can't really complain about running bad in this pot because I ran well in the €9K pot.
Can I sing this song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YGXsw3XK9I about my trip to the Aviation Club de Paris?
No I cannot, because although it was a winning trip for me I wanted it to be a winning trip in tournaments for both myself and for backers. My game selection was also poor on my last day so I only have myself to blame for the dent that it put in my profits.
So until Deauville, c'est au revoir de ma part.
Last edited by SageDonkey; 01-27-2012 at 07:42 PM.
