£100 P.R.O.P.S. Update

12K starting stack, I have 25K at the end of level 4 which is also the end of the re-entry period.

Approx 25 players started and there have been approx 11 re-entries so prize pool looks like £3.6K, I'll confirm later. I think there are 22 players left.

good work and gl smashing it up!

Firstly, sry for incomplete update last time. Internet connection is poor and loads of rowdy kids making noise next to me made it difficult to concentrate in the Internet area of The International.

23 started and 14 re-entered so prize pool is GBP 3700. 4 places paid, GBP 1.7K down to 380 ish for 4th.

I have 36K average is 55K but there is 130K stack (drunk gambler who has got it in bad a few times in PLO and got there when 20/80 on the flop)

So effective average without him is 46K.

I have played very well. I have won every single pot I have been in. Only chips I have lost are blinds. I have not even had to raise fold pre. I have been fairly card dead though so I have had to play very snug.

Blinds are 600/1200 when we go back.

Deal done when 3 handed.

I cashed for £850.

Mini tournament report to follow.

Very nice job - great start to the package, sir.

Good start, keep up the rungood/playgood.

-BD

Thank you. There was no run good involved in this comp, got my money in super good using skill in one big pot in the first level, and I trapped a player a couple of times on the FT getting him to put his money in as a huge dog. I also used some skilful laddering when short on the FT. I wouldn't say I have run good as a whole in my live PLO and Mixed Games MTT career. I've probably run about even.

Apart from my second ever live NLHE played I have run bad in some big prize pool NLHE live comps. Had I run well I may well have had an extra £5K+ and £10K+ cash to my name.

I'll post a tournament report later.

Tournament report for £100 P.R.O.P.S. at The International.

12k starting stack, 25 minute clock, 25/50, re-entries allowed until the end of level 4.

23 runners, 14 re-entries making a prize pool of £3700.

I finished 3rd for £850. Rating of my play is 9 out of 10.

I played very clinical, super focused poker throughout. I am very happy with the result particularly as I did not re-enter so my 3rd place cash for £850 is a great ROI on my £115 buy in.

My ratings deduction of 1 point can be broken down into three sections.

I am deducting 0.5 points for a call I made in 5 card PLO on the FT against the big stack which I should have laid down and would have saved me 5K of chips. Every poker instinct in my body told me I was losing but I made the call on an “in a vacuum” decision basis which I know from experience is the wrong thing to do in certain situations in live tournaments.

I deduct 0.3 for a hand just before the end of level 4 when I barrelled every street in 5 card PLO with top two because I knew from the body language and timing tells of my opponent that he was drawing. He almost passed on the river but made the call because he was getting 3/1 on his remaining chips and I think (having noticed him glance up at the tournament clock before making the call) that he also made the call because he could re-enter if he was wrong. Had he had a few more chips and/or had it been just after level 4 I think he would have passed. When he called he thought he was losing, it was actually a chop but in hindsight I think I played the hand over aggressively.

Finally, I deduct 0.2 because having re-looked today at the chip stack calculations I think the £850 I got in the deal we did three handed was £35 below fair value.

Other than the three things above I played exceptionally well.

I got an early double up (in level 1) when I played a Razz hand perfectly. Bet size and pot size finessing in pot limit stud games (and indeed in PLO MTTs) is crucial in the tournament version of the game because the combination of equities potentially changing so fast street by street and the extra street of betting compared to flop games means that one needs to manage the size of the pot in such a way as to not over commit chips too early and at the same time give your opponent the chance to over commit their chips when their equity is poor.

I don't want to detail exactly how this is done but I executed it perfectly in this Razz hand, by under repping on earlier streets to disguise my strength and ultimately by getting my opponent to chase a draw with his whole stack when he had only about 9 outs, maybe less.

This put me on 25K.

In the meantime over on another table all mayhem was breaking loose as a LAG player who is talented but who deliberately plays a recreational style in this level of buy in comp and is always in a hurry to get home because he has work in the morning was knocking out players for fun. He was solely responsible for 3 or 4 of the re-entries happening and it was almost comical as a procession of players arrived at my table with similar stories of how they either got it in super good against him and were outdrawn or that they got it in bad against him thinking they were good based on his bad play in a previous pot against someone else!

I should emphasize that through chatting to him on various occasions over the last 18 months he is a talented PLO cash game player that when he focuses and has the proper time available to play can and does win some big money at higher stakes cash games.

I became very card dead but due to my double up and one or two PLO8 pots where I chopped but we split some dead money I was in a comfortable position just above the average despite the fact that I had only entered for one buy in.

The LAG player then joined my table. By now two of the best players in the comp who were at my table were quite big in chips (both had 50 to 70% more than me). I was becoming a little concerned by this. However, the LAG player was instrumental in them both being knocked out. Had this not happened then despite the fact that I was very card dead I would have gone on the attack more than I did. But he did the job for me so I stayed playing very tight knowing that my stack was in the top few places despite it now being a little below the average.

Eventually I picked up some better starting hands and in one pot involving the LAG player I managed to profit by 12K of chips when I took half of the lot in a 3 way PLO8 pot when I had the nut high and they both went a bit crazy with the nut low.

Not much happened for me then until the final table which was 8 handed as was the whole comp.

I had 36K, the average was 55K but the LAG had 130K making the average without him 46K, Blinds were 600/1200 and 4 places were being paid.

36K is just about enough here for some play so although not totally comfortable I was still very relaxed and focused and optimistic about a decent cash. However, I had an awful seat draw when in seat 2 the LAG with 130K who is never folding and often 3 betting sits down to my left in seat 3!!

I am now not quite as optimistic of my chances but you still need to have a plan, and I made one.

There were a few other shorties so I decided to play tight in an attempt to ladder. But if I see a big hand or a big +EV situation I would go with it because I am not trying to min cash I am trying to cash well.

There was one other quite big stack, and guess what, the LAG played a big part in knocking him out very early on the final table. The LAG now has over half of the chips in play 6 handed. Now I really can ladder.

I then picked up a nice hand in 5 card PLO, AKJT5 DS (My stack is still 36K and blinds are still 600/1200) I am UTG+1. I make it 2700. The LAG insta makes it 10K and after a series of snap folds he suggests to me that I should get it in now because he is never folding on any flop.

Now when I made it 2700 I had already pre-determined that I would flat if he made a 3 bet and play stop and go and I was never, ever passing to his 3 bet. If I get 3 bet as big as 10K by any other player I probably lay it down but his range is super wide (he has over 200K in chips) and before he even announced it I know he is always putting me in or calling my near all in on any flop.

Also bear in mind that equities in 5 card PLO are even closer still than those in 4 card PLO so one is never far ahead and unless we are isolating to achieve a lot of dead money, getting it all in pre for your tournament life is not clever.

So I did a bit of acting as if my hand was weak and as if I was thinking about passing and then I made a “reluctant” call. Unfortunately the flop was J73 with two hearts, a suit which I didn't have.

I put on a big dwell act hoping to get a free card but it didn't work and he potted it. Obviously I had to fold. So I am now down to 26K.

This isn't a complete disaster because we are down to 6 and there are 2 or 3 other players with similarly short stacks to mine. So it's carry on laddering and get it in if I see a good +EV spot.

This worked quickly because another short stack was soon out. He was very short (about 9K) and I knocked him out in Razz. The LAG had decided to go for a toilet break when in the BB. The 9K stack raised from UTG showing a Ten up. I had an 8 up and something like 34 underneath.

I put him in and my hand held. He said straight afterwards that he was trying to steal the blinds.

Now we are on the bubble and we all agreed to take some money off the first 3 places and award £150 for fifth.

So what is my plan now? It's the same, ladder but attack in the right spots. The next payout is £370 (a big jump in percentage terms) and I know that if I stay calm and focused I can keep progressing up the pay jumps.

The big stack then knocked out another player. So now I am guaranteed £370 but I am down to 22K. Blinds are 1K/2K. I have 11BBs so am done with laddering now.

I the get dealt a made King Padooki. I limp with it, not because it is not winning (it nearly always is), but because I want the LAG to raise. He only calls. I pat on the first draw he takes two. I pot it, he puts me all in, draws 1 twice and misses each time. So I am up to 50K.

A couple of orbits go by and I slip to 42K. Then I get rolled up 5s as part of my five cards dealt to me in Superstud. In between times the LAG had lost about a third of his chips in Padooki and was audibly and physically becoming increasingly frustrated at how long the comp was taking to finish. Obviously I limped with my hand hoping that he or anybody else would raise. Nobody did and we were four way to the flop.

None of the other 3 players got an obvious improver on 4th. I got a 7, which is good for me because it is a blocker to someone else's low and because it gives me a very outside chance of making a triple runner low myself. The main thing of course is that I am miles ahead for the high.

I bet the pot and obligingly the LAG player got it all in with me on 4th. He was never really at the races for either part of the pot and I doubled up to over 90K.

Another player got knocked out and shortly after this we agreed a deal 3 handed.

I hope you enjoyed the report and that it gave you a flavour of some of the strategies that I use in a pot limit Omaha or mixed games tournament. I have many others in my armoury but it is about selecting the right strategies for the right situations and I think I did this well yesterday and that I was deserving of my result.
The next comp is the £40 PLO8 at The Fox poker club in London on January 21st. Then we move on to the really interesting stuff at the EFOP in Paris starting on the 22nd.

I am not getting carried away at all with this decent result last night. There is a lot of hard work left to do and things will get much tougher during the course of this tournament package.

Amounts earned by backers so far:

reallygambling (2plus2): £42.50
Charlie T (Gutshot Forum): £42.50
BackingDonk (2plus2): £42.50
gnm777 (2plus2): £42.50 (to be converted into Euros)
lsaw2 (2plus2): £42.50
Anonymous Investor (Gutshot Forum): £42.50
Private Investor: £42.50
Silent Disco (Gutshot Forum): £25.50
xdanielx (2plus2): £17
CMOS (Gutshot Forum): £42.50
Giffordonian (2plus2): £42.50
Meaks (Gutshot Forum): £17
Ninjasam (Gutshot Forum): £25.50

reallygambling now only needs to pay me £145.50 (under our agreed payment schedule)
Giffordonian now only needs to pay me £145.50 (under our agreed payment schedule)
Ninjasam now only needs to pay me £87.50 (under our agreed payment schedule)

(Obviously there is no "flop" in Superstud - excuse the typo)

reallygambling now only needs to pay me £145.50 (under our agreed payment schedule)
Giffordonian now only needs to pay me £145.50 (under our agreed payment schedule)
Ninjasam: £87.50 cash received with thanks.

Great TR and good job playing. Negotiating deals at the FT is a tough art. There are ICM chip calculators available if you have net access but in most cases a straight chip chop is OK (unless you are super-short) and can usually be figured there and then (or at least the tourney staff should know how to do it).

Personally I'm also OK if you decide not to deal at all, but obv that's up to you.

-BD

Thanks BD.

I was the short stack and the TD did a chip chop calc which as you said gave a joke very low figure for my share. I got way higher than the chip chop figure but it was still a few pounds under fair value.

It is usually best for me not to make a deal because if I didn't have a playing edge then I wouldn't be playing the comp in the first place.

I could have maybe played on for the win in the P.R.O.P.S. but felt that given that it was the very first comp that taking £850 was sensible and that I could then leave the comp at that stage knowing that I had played within a whisker of my full potential.

The confidence boost I was given paid off for me because I played a mixed games comp on Stars not long after and won it. I won a few $K for the win. Not only that but I had 60% of the chips in play when six handed on the FT and a 4 to 1 chip lead HU.

So confidence often breeds more confidence and placing 3rd in the P.R.O.P.S. helped me take down the on line comp. Incidentally, when I played the on line comp it was the only table I was playing. This is something I mentioned earlier in this thread that I am very good playing one table when the stakes or the buy in is meaningful but not so good multi tabling smaller stakes buy ins.

I am playing a £2/£5 DC cash game at The International tonight and sold 50% of myself at no mark up because it is twice as big a buy in game as the usual £1/£2 that I play in and despite making good profits recently in both cash and comps I want to exercise proper BRM so that I protect and consolidate the profits that I have already made.

I didn't offer any of the equity in that game on 2plus2 because it was short notice so only really open to people in the U.K. that could give me cash or a quick U.K. bank transfer.

The game will have some soft spots in it but it could also be straddled often meaning that the 3 x £500 bullets that I have available are a shortish stack to play with.

So variance could be very high for me but I am still optimistic and positive about doing well.

I'll post a summary of what happened in my session ITT.

Nothing spectacular to report about my Dealers Choice cash game session last night.

They changed it back down to a £1/£2 which if I had known this I would not have got 50% backing for it.

Anyway I sat in it for 4 hours, played well, and cashed out for a £376 profit of which half I paid out to backers.

Whilst in the game a player who is a well known sponsored pro and was in the P.R.O.P.S comp told me that he had read my tournament report and asked me about my rationale behind playing stop and go when I was 3 bet to 10K by the slightly drunk gambly player in the 5 card PLO hand on the FT.

The discussion was very interesting and ultimately boiled down to ICM calculations and the fact that my opponent was getting his chips in on any flop.

(That's probably my last cash game session now until a live web casted £1/£3 PLO on January 31st.)

It's not exactly exciting reading but here is my cash game backing thread for the game on the Gutshot Forum:
http://www.gutshot.com/forum/showthr...500-BI-DC-Game

I don't mind the stop and go if you think you have fold equity but if you don't then it's either jam or fold pre. Didn't want to bog the thread down with too much strat tho.

If you do have other future cash game action to sell, feel free to let me know via PM, can pay via UK Skrill.

-BD

I agree, it could be a massive discussion on that stop and go hand because it involved multi layers of thinking, hand equity calcs, ICM considerations, and various other view points about overall tournament and FT strategy. There is quite a lot of difference in these spots between a live comp and an on line comp because live (if you are good at reading people and profiling them, which I am) you can often work out what a player will do on the flop before the flop has been dealt.

I will certainly let you know if I have cash game action available. If there is a game that I know I am a big +EV in where the stakes or the sit down is much bigger than my usual then I will sell some. I would say that I am a big +EV in almost any pot limit mixed games live cash game that exists, in some of the limit versions and in many live PLO cash games.

reallygambling now only needs to pay me £145.50 (money is now there for my collection)
Giffordonian: Ninjasam: £145.50 cash received with thanks.
Ninjasam: £87.50 cash received with thanks.

Next comp is tomorrow. It is the smallest of the whole series, £40 PLO8 at Fox in London, so I'll post the result and a report here after the comp and won't do any in running updates because I have limited or no internet access there.

For the French comps starting on 22nd I also won't have internet access but I will text periodic updates.

I am looking for two volunteers from this forum and two from the Gutshot forum for me to send text updates to for them to then if they can post the updates on the respective threads of each forum.

Please post your names and I will select 2 people from each forum to send updates to. Updates will probably only be in the breaks (and maybe not in every break) because I have damaged my own concentration in the past by sending too many updates and I have also found that I have needed the 10 to 15 minute break to compose myself, eat and drink or have a comfort break etc and that the time is sometimes not best used fiddling about on a mobile phone.

If you are a non text receiving backer and do not see an in play update on this thread then you may see one first on the Gutshot forum thread. http://www.gutshot.com/forum/showthr...PLO-trek/page7

Just to let everyone know that I am going to skip the £40 PLO8 tomorrow.

The reason is that I strained my side a few days ago when I was sprinting in a race against my friend on his bicycle. I won the race but being a bit out of shape I sustained the injury. It seemed to have eased off but last night when stretching down to pick some clothes out of my washing machine I tweaked it again and it is now quite sore.

The £40 PLO8 got 25 runners the last time I played in it so I think it is better because the prize pool at stake will be very small for me to rest my side all day tomorrow and not to potentially aggravate it by sitting in the comp all day plus the travelling on the underground to and from the venue.

The extra day's rest will mean that my side is a bit better for when I get on the Eurostar for Paris on Sunday at midday. The injury is not ideal but I won't let it stop me from concentrating 100% and going for the win in both the H.O.R.S.E. and the P.L.O.

I will of course add the appropriate refunds to investors' payouts.

Btw, I am still looking for two investors from 2plus2 (preferably with U.K. mobile phones) to pm me their numbers so that I can send them in play text updates.

Thanks.

Okay, I have an investor who I will be sending texts to with updates. He is active on The Gutshot Forum so look out for his updates at:
http://www.gutshot.com/forum/showthr...588#post316588

Don't be too alarmed if he embroiders the facts with his catchphrases, he is a genius at them. E.g. "PEEL, HIT, SHOVE, STRETCHER!"

Bonne chance à nous

GLGL do wins.

I've arrived in Paris. Hotel good and only a few minutes walk from ACF. Have wi-fi at the hotel so will post a summary if tonight's comp when I return from it. In play updates may appear on the Gutshot Forum via text. €250 Cheval starts at 8 p.m. Paris time.

Let's crush the French!

I've arrived in Paris. Hotel good and only a few minutes walk from ACF. Have wi-fi at the hotel so will post a summary of tonight's comp when I return from it. In play updates may appear on the Gutshot Forum via text. €250 Cheval starts at 8 p.m. Paris time.

Let's crush the French!

20th of 62. I should have won it. Report in sections and with typos cos typing from my smart phone and forum auto logs me out quickly.

Super soft field who were bad at a lot of the games, awful on hand strength selection and just genarally gamblers. Starting stack 10k but I didn't win a pot in first 3 levels cos I bricked the world 3 times 8n 3 big pots. But I fought back to 10k and then to 18k.

Then I owned a player by under telling early pot in Razz and by dwell acting later pot to take my stack to 30k. Them I won some more pots to get to 38k. I am now chip leader at my table and dominating my table. I'm also 3rd of about 30 runners left.