Tournament Report
€300 EPT Deauville NLHE Men's Turbo
216 runners, 5000 chips, 15 minute clock, 25/50.
2nd of 216, deal done 3 handed for €10.7K, rating 9 out of 10, adjusted down from 9.5 having now written this tournament report.
I said the night before this comp that it was a bit of a punt for me and that because it was NLHE, not my favoured PLO or Mixed Games, that I was more likely to get pwned by an opponent or to play a hand really badly.
What I hadn't considered and hadn't said was that my record in live NLHE Turbos (and faster structured NLHE comps, such as with a 20 minute clock) is actually very good. I have also improved at NLHE strategy over the last few months by taking part in a lot of strategy threads on The Gutshot Forum and by watching other players play NLHE comps, including a lot of good players who I know IRL and/or who I have had a piece of in NLHE comps. I regularly read a lot of live blogs and watch live feeds of NLHE tournaments.
I frequently play short sessions of short stack NLHE cash using a very similar strategy to that of a shallow NLHE tournament and have been successful using this strategy in these cash games.
So I was never going to be the value in this €300 Turbo. My NLHE strength which is pre flop and sub 30BBs when antes are in play suited the structure so if I could play my A game, avoid making errors, and not run bad in key spots then I would have a very good chance of doing well.
On my opening table, which I was never moved from until the FT, I had Roberto Romanello 3 seats to my right. The table was 10 handed. I wasn't elated about having him at my table because he is an exceptional player but at least I was to his right, even if it was 3 seats to his right.
However, I picked up some obvious things very quickly. Firstly, he was playing quite loose and it was clear that he saw this sized buy in comp as a win it quick get a lot of chips quickly comp or bust quickly affair. As far as I know he bricked his bigger comps before this one, including the €5K ME. Secondly, his face painted the picture of a man who had had about an hour's sleep. So this meant that although he was still very dangerous, he was not at the peak of his powers in this comp.
I exchanged a few words with him at the beginning and he may have also remembered talking to me at EPT San Remo during a break when Sam MacDonald introduced me to him. So although I was wary of him I think he also wasn't taking me for granted and wasn't rating me as one of the weak players at the table.
Right from the get go he opened 80% of pots from all positions and most of the time got a series of snap folds by raising to as little as 125 with blinds at 25/50 or only got one caller plus the BB calling. He also called nearly every opening raise pre. There was little or no 3 betting by anybody at the table.
This worked for him when eventually a funky hand like T9 off won him a big pot with top pair when he kept check calling on every street against an opponent who had raised pre with 55.
During this period he got his stack up to 7K. I played just the one pot with him. Wary that he was very dangerous, that the €300 meant nothing to him, that he had a super wide opening range and that he was capable of outplaying me post flop I decided that I would basically keep pots small with him.
I only played one pot with him when he raised 125 from EP with blinds 25/50 and I flatted with AQs. As I said, I wanted to keep pots small with him and by flatting I was under repping my hand which I thought might be a better way of trying to win a big pot from him whilst limiting my downside at the same time. Also we were 100+BBs deep at the time.
The flop came 532rb. He bet 150, I called. The turn was an off suit 3. He checked, I could easily have bet here but I checked because I have a lot of cards to probably hit to be almost definitely good and my hand has showdown value. Against most other opponents I would bet the turn but I was sticking to my game plan to not get too involved with him.
The river was a 9. He bet 150 again and I called. He showed J5h.
AQ was the first nice hand that I had picked up.
But whilst Romanello had been accumulating a few chips I had been busy studying all of the players at the table and had firmly profiled all of them from old man rock, through to local average type players who could play a bit but were not high level thinkers, through to impatient gambler types.
Romanello's strategy had also helped me a lot because what he had done for me was to test the temperature of the table, and the temperature of the table was very cold, very tight and lacking in flair.
So with my starting stack of 5000 now down to 4400 and blinds 50/100 I decided to open up my game to try to exploit the nittiness of the table. I would do what Romanello had been doing at 25/50 but with slightly more selective starting hands and table position than he had,
So blinds 50/100. I get A2h in the CO. I raise to 250. Fold, fold and the BB calls. It is a peeling old man.
Flop is JQ7rb but with one heart. He checks, I don't C bet because I think the flop can easily be hitting his range here and there aren't a whole bunch of turns that improve me. So I check behind.
Turn is a 5h. He bets 350. I call. There is no point in raising here as I am getting re-popped by hands that are miles ahead of me and sometimes by draws that I am ahead of. When I called I put him on 68 or a worse flush draw than me, possibly with a gutshot too, meaning that I have showdown value and that there are some bingo cards that make him his straight or flush but that are losing to me.
The river was a complete brick. We both check and my A2 is good.
In the next orbit with blinds at 75/150 I get 68d in the HJ. I make it 375. Only the SB calls.
Flop is K52rb. He checks. I don't c bet because stacks are too shallow to do so and I think there are some Kx hands in his range.. Turn is an off suit 7 giving me a straight draw. He checks again, I put out a bet of 350 and he snap folds.
So I am playing these pots cagily and with position and am starting to build a stack. I also stole a couple of times from late position pre with 2.3x raises that got through. I think a 25 ante is now in play and I have 6500 with blinds 100/200/25.
Then a nervous type of local player to my right went to raise to 525 UTG+2 and then with sweaty palms downgraded it to 475 from his stack of 4400. Now if this had been a top player then I may have been a more suspicious of him making it 475 to induce. But the way he did it indicated to me that he had a small pair or some kind of weak suited ace.
I looked down to find TT. I decided to make it 1175 to deter him from peeling because it would leave his SPR awkward on the flop, or to induce a shove because I was certain of my tell on him. Everyone passed and he passed. I now have 7000 chips and the average is from memory about 5800.
In every hand up until this point and in every hand throughout the whole comp I was taking quite a few seconds pre flop when it came around to me to start looking at my cards. I used this time to carefully put any player in the hand on a range, and sometimes on a very specific hand, by combining my profiling of them that I had been building and adjusting throughout, combined with their bet sizing and what it meant in conjunction with their own stack size and with other stacks sizes yet to act. Pausing each time also tilts people, prevents me from giving off any pre flop timing tells and just generally gives off an aura of scariness.
I was wearing my wrap around shades and I also decided for this comp to wear my scarf for additional camouflage.
I think my table persona worked well for me. I also adopted a chip collecting and chip stacking strategy that I have copied from some top players that I have observed. It was very noticeable during the first break when I had 7000 chips which was not very much above the average that when I looked at my stack from the vantage point of the player over at the other end of the table that my stack looked an awful lot bigger than it's real numerical value.
I carried on using this method and I believe it had the desired effect on my opponents. Later on in the comp when I had a genuine huge stack I reverted to my regular chip stacking formation which is a progressive triangle or delta shape and at one point there was barely enough space for my cards to sit in because the back row of the delta was eight chips wide and about 12 chips high. It was a good feeling!
To get to 7k I had to take part in some post flop play which as I keep mentioning is not my favourite part of NLHE. But after reaching 7k I only played one hand post flop for the rest of the tournament and in fact it was the only hand of the whole tournament that I played really badly.
Meanwhile Roberto has busted. He got it all in with AJ on an J83 board against a set of 3s. Nice person as he is and a great personality too, I was very pleased to see him go. I had followed my game plan of avoiding him only losing one small pot to him at 25/50, and he had done a great job for me in testing the temperature of the table in the early levels.
A couple of amusing things to tell you. He was so sleep deprived that when he was on the BTN he announced “call” and picked up the SB's chips, that were already over the line, and added some of his own to make the call with. The whole table were in hysterics and it appeared to be due to tiredness and not a deliberate act of comedy.
In one hand a French player 4 bet all in which got a fold. He then showed Kings. Another player said “ahh, papiers” (pronounced “papp-ee-ayy”). I asked what do you mean by papiers? He answered that it means like when you show your papers at a check point, in other words his papers were in order and he actually had it. I might use this “papiers” phrase myself from now on because I like it.
A common feature of French players in tournaments over there, it happened at the EFOP in Paris too, is that a player will show his friend who is also playing at the table or a player seated next to him one card or both cards after mucking or after getting someone else to muck. I was very insistent to the dealer in this comp that I must be shown too. I did this because I wanted every possible scrap of information available to me to help me define players' ranges and playing methods.
As the comp went on I also managed to cajole information out of players about what they had already played or won in their poker career which helped my profile them even more. The best one was when down to 3 tables and a new player arrived at the table immediately to my left. The comp by this point was very shallow and playing quite cagey meaning that there were numerous potential blind on blind battles.
By falsely befriending him I managed to get him to tell me everything about him poker wise and I also persuaded him a few times to get him to show me his cards when I passed to him in the small blind.
From this I worked out, because he unwittingly told me over the course of a few conversations, that he knew what the standard mathematical range was that the SB should be shoving with and that the BB should be calling with. So this made it easy for me to play perfectly against him blind on blind.
I also picked up free information throughout the comp, and especially when down to two tables, as to who the higher level thinkers were. There are loads of obvious clues, some of which are through observing how they play hands but many of the clues are from their behaviour off the table and while not in hands.
So back to the comp...........
I resume after the break with 8.8k, blinds are 150/300/25, the average is 5900 and there are 183 left of 216. There is a huge 4 sided electronic scoreboard/tournament clock suspended from the ceiling and I start to observe the number of players left dropping quickly.
I am above the average, there is now very little post flop play, I have profiled every opponent and know their ranges and their playing styles. So all I need to and should do now is to pick my spots carefully, steal a few chips here and there and hope that I can run good in key pots.
It is at this point that I have a strong feeling that I can win this comp. I am totally in the zone and apart from one player at my table, who eventually finished 3rd, I do not rate any of the rest of the players at my table and know that I have an edge against them.
I also feel that I am hungrier than most others in the comp because I felt badly done to by the player in the previous day's €1K PLO who crippled me playing very bad against me.
Now I start to run good, but I also maximise this by not making any errors, remaining very disciplined and by maximising my good hands.
A tight player with a 5K stack made it 1100 from EP at 150/300/25. Again I give a lot of thought to what his range is before looking down at my cards and through my blacked out shades I stare at him for a few seconds to see if I can pick up a tell. He looks very, very uncomfortable.
I look down and see Jacks. I put him on an under pair and calculate that he has made this sized raise because he doesn't want a call or a raise. I pause, play with my chips and then announce “Tapie, all in, smcrezvna”. I tell him that smcrezvna is Hungarian for all in. (I made that part up of course). I was attempting the psychology of “strong is weak” I think he has enough chips behind to pass and he certainly could have done had he not raised as much initially.
He thinks for a little while and then makes the call with 66. Jacks hold and I am now on the march.
I then 3 bet some players off hands pre and stole a few pots pre. With the antes in there and the general climate of fear at the table my stack is growing quickly.
I now have 20k, ave 8K, 140 runners left and every time I catch a glance of the scoreboard I see the number of runners click down by one or two. The turbo aspect of this comp is really starting to kick in as the antes get bigger and as short stacks' M values begin to quickly collapse.
I then win a 20K pot with KK > KQ so now have 30K but even though the average is 12k blinds are now 600/1200/100 so I am still quite shallow. I get my stack up to 35k but blinds are now 1000/2000/200 and the average is 27K with 45 runners left and 24 paid.
I can see that unless I gain some chips very soon that I will be in a situation of being forced into a play that I don't really want to make.
So I see an opportunity for a calculated gamble, I take it, and it pays off. An orbit earlier an eccentric middle aged Frenchman had made a 3.5x raise from his 12BB stack in the HJ. I had found him the hardest of all my opponents to put on a range because he played so weird. (he would eventually make the FT and make an awful play that underlines how bad he is)
When he raised 3.5x there was a short stack on the BTN who called and I had A9o in the BB.
I felt that in a vacuum I should shove risking two thirds of my stack to him. However, I passed on the basis that his range was difficult to define. He turned over A7s and strangely enough made trip 7s. I still think it was the correct fold by me because it was not a great spot against a player with a random kind of playing style.
An orbit later the calculated gamble I took was when he 3x raised again and the SB who was a competent Russian shoved. The Russian had 20K and I had 35K. I had KQo. I felt that the Russian had something but that the top end of his range was a middle pair. The eccentric made an involuntary gesture with his cards that he was passing so I though this was a great spot to call and to get up to 60k. If I lose this pot I still have 15k and can still come back from this. If I win it I am in prime position to go deep.
I made the call and the Russian showed TT which was above what I thought he had but still okay for my calculated gamble.
I hit a Queen on the river. He was absolutely furious and stormed off. I don't mind the gamble here, I was so short that I needed to manufacture something like this or else risk getting blinded and anted away or being forced to open shove with any two cards that would have worse equity than my KQ had and not have the benefit of dead money in there and it may have been when I was down to 18K meaning that a double up would only get me back to where I am before this hand but with blinds even higher.
So now at the 45 min dinner break. I have 60k. Ave 27k. 40 left, 20 paid. 17k for 1st.
Blinds 1000/2000/200. When I returned from the break the figure was 34 left with the average at 32K. The scoreboard had been slow to update.
I then open shoved a couple of times from the BTN and CO with QTs and A5 against the blinds who were both short stacks and it got through each time. I then picked off a short stack with my KJ against his TJ to add more chips. The standard of player at the table was definitely far higher now. So when I was in MP I min raised it 3 times, twice it got through and once I passed to a 3 bet when I had a pair of 3s.
I am now on 95K and I think am the joint chip leader with about 28 left.
Then I play my only post flop hand of the tournament, apart from the few played in the very early levels, and I play it badly. A good player, who I think is a young English pro, decided to open with a flat from the CO. This was the first time anyone had done this for many levels. I had some garbage like 93o in the BB and checked. (his stack was about 55K) and blinds were 1500/3000/200.
The flop was KJ4 or QT5, something like that. I checked and he C bet 3700. I thought I picked up a tell that he was weak so I raised to 8000. But the problem here, which I realised a nanosecond after raising is that my check raise doesn't really rep much and that he has enough chips behind to just flat me in position and re-evaluate the turn, maybe even if he only has a small or medium pair.
The turn was like an 8, I had to check, he bet about 1/3rd of the pot and I passed. I think I played this hand horribly.
So I am down to 85K but accepted that it was one bad hand and immediately put it behind me.
However, as often happens in poker you seem to then have something bad happen to you shortly after making an error.
In the next orbit I got AQs in MP. The now 65K stack had already passed. The rest of the stacks left to act were all about mid 20Ks stacks apart from one stack of 38k. Blinds were still 1.5k/3k/200.
So I deliberately made it 8.5k to make it look like I was at it and to get a short stack to shove light with a worse ace or some other hand that I had dominated. Unfortunately the 39k stack (the player who eventually finished 3rd) shoved. With the amount in there (caused by my initial raise size) I had to make the call. He had KK and it held. He won an 80K pot and we switched chip positions.
I now have 45K which is a little above the average with 30 players left. Again I am disappointed but I am still very determined and losing the hand did not affect my concentration or focus in any way, shape or form.
I went a bit card dead and a short time later we were on the bubble and I had 35K and the average was 43k with blinds at 2k/4k/300. I can tell you right now that there was no way I was going to bubble having put in so much hard work and having bricked a chunk of comps in the package, a few of them being in some unfortunate and painful circumstances.
They would literally have had to kill me to make me bubble. No I wouldn't have passed a big hand or a big +EV spot (neither of which I got) but I was watching the stack sizes, all hands played, and most importantly the BTN position like a hawk on all three tables.
If you want to look at it this way, I was already in a sense in ICM laddering mode.
24th paid €450 from memory as a min cash, with €17K for 1st place. I know that if I can get ITM, even with a short stack, that I will be very dangerous. I know this because I have done the same thing twice before in EPT events. Both times I was very short when reaching the money or the FT and I came 3rd and 4th respectively. I also did a similar thing in the first event of this package, the £100 P.R.O.P.S.
(I am not a compulsive ladderer but I understand the maths and the strategy of it very well so in certain situations because of my ability to execute laddering perfectly is it right for me to do it. The thing is that other players are still laddering when just in the money and this is the area of the tournament that I can exploit)
Anyway, my laddering on the bubble calculations worked out exactly as expected and within 15 hands the bubble had burst, we had 22 left and I was on 2/3rds of the average. During these hands I stole once and was stolen from 3 times.
But now I am in the money I know what to do.................... open shove with any hand that has decent equity. I waited for these kind of hands and they arrived quickly, because let's face it, it is a big range of hands. I got 3 open shoves through in quick succession. Then when I did it a 4th time I had a real hand AJ and was called by a smaller Ace who I out chipped anyway and I held.
Now that I have a decent stack I revert to tightening up and I min raise to steal. This gets through a couple of times and once when on the BTN a good player to my left, who I think was Moroccan and perhaps quite successful, probably sensed weakness and shoved. I passed K9s. He may have had TJs or a small pair but it is clearly the right fold for ICM reasons and because my original raise is primarily to steal, and secondarily if a bad player peels in the blinds then my hand may flop well enough to C bet or shove with or I can C bet small regardless if the check looks weak.
Meanwhile because my stack is now about the average and I am keeping pace with the increase in blinds I have switched out of aggression mode and into semi laddering mode. Other players are making mistakes against each other, not paying enough attention to ICM, and knocking each other out.
Before very long I am on the FT of ten players. I have 110K, the average is 108K and in the seat redraw I get a bit of luck when the good Moroccan is now 1 seat to my right instead of 1 to my left. I can see that he is not pleased about this. One seat to my left is the eccentric middle aged Frenchman who I mentioned earlier and who went on to make a truly awful play at the FT.
I will describe the other FT players in a moment.
But first............... disaster strikes!!
Charlie T who was the only other player in Deauville who I play regularly against in London and who had 5% of me was playing in the cash games in the main casino. The TD announced a 15 minute break before the FT would start.
Now remembering that there is a potential side bet going on between me and some London based players about me running a 11.5 seconds or better 100M at my ripe old age of over 40, I knew that running to and from the cash games in the casino and the annexe where the tournaments were and having a chat with Charlie all within 15 minutes would be an absolute piece of cake for me.
I raced into third, fourth and fifth gear in a matter of strides and was flying down the connecting corridor between the two buildings. Such was the power and G-Force I was creating that my body was soon over heating and I had to remove my scarf that had been camouflaging me throughout the comp. I was now running at the speed of light clutching my heavy winter jacket in one hand and my scarf in the other.
I arrived in the cash game room barely out of breath but Charlie was not there!
So I sprinted back to the tournament annexe and arrived there with a good few minutes to spare.
However, when I looked down my right hand was empty, the scarf was no more, it had been ejected from my person like a spent fuel tank is ejected from the Space Shuttle during its decent to Earth.
On the one hand I was concerned that the loss of the scarf might disrupt my routine and look at the table but on the other hand the sprint around the building had pumped me up and got my blood flowing so was probably a good thing.
I had to buy a replacement scarf the following day.
So to the final table:
I don't remember every player but these are the ones that I do remember.
The bad eccentric middle aged Frenchman to my left was slightly short. (70k) The bad play he made was when with blinds at 5K/10/1K was that he raised to 28K from the CO. A stack with 150K minned it to 56K and he peeled leaving only 14K behind. He then check folded on an AK7 board. He was out soon after.
The player who min raised was a young kid who was 3 betting for fun at the FT. However, he didn't have the discipline to temper this or to ever think of consolidating and eventually he ran into some big hands, had priced himself into calling 4 bet shoves from medium sized stacks, lost two big pots and busted in about 6th.
The French player who finished 3rd was very good, I think his name is Antoine. He played in a similar style to me on the FT. The Finn, Kalle Niemi, I have already discussed at length. He started as one of the big stacks and gave the classic tell of a seasoned and higher level player by asking “for a count” a couple of times when in the BB and facing a short stack shove. He made the right call twice with moderate Kx and Qx hands, was winning both times and it held both times.
The Moroccan to my right never really got going on the FT. There were two young(ish) kids at the table who both definitely knew what they were doing. Both were a little short on chips. One I think was English and he ran bad when his Jacks were cracked by someone's QT AIP.
The other good young player may have been German or perhaps a Scandi. When he was down to about 40K with blinds 6K/12K/1K he open shoved and I snapped him off with 66. He had AQ and I held.
Then there was a Russian or maybe Pole/Czech (somewhere around that region) who I believe was well out of his depth. He had about 110K and busted in a 3 way all in. The good French player with 130K open shoved and was called by a 90K stack. The Russian went into the tank and called with AQ. I think AQ is a pass in this pot because of ICM and because there was a lot of min raise taking it down at the FT so the open shove and the snap call in front of him indicate tight ranges.
Ms were an average of just over 5 but because of the prize jumps players with the average stack were not open shoving without the goods. His AQ was indeed no good as he was up against AK and JJ. An Ace hit and two players disappeared in one hand.
It is now down to 5 players. I picked up A9s on the BTN and shoved my 130K stack in. It is the correct play for sure 5 handed and laddering considerations have now gone out of the window for me because I out chipped the small and big blinds and because I have already got up to something like a €3K guaranteed pay out.
The BB dwells for ages and calls with QJs. A horrible call by him. I make a flush on the turn. Down to 4 players. The Finn then knocked out someone and we immediately start to discuss a deal, the details of which are in my previous posts. After the deal was struck the other two immediately went to war with each other and I was HU with the Finn within 6 hands. He had a 3 to 1 chip lead. I was down to 10 BBs and shoved J9o. He asked for a count and made the call with K8o. It held and he was the champion. We all went to the cashier together, got our payments, and made the monetary adjustments in private as agreed.
So that's the story of the €300 NLHE Turbo.
Did I play perfectly? No, I made a couple of mistakes.
Was I the second, third, fourth or even 7th best player in the tournament? Probably not, this was a mens only comp, was at a stage in the week when many top players had busted the main and other NLHE side events and I think we will see when the list of cashers is published that it had a number of top names in it.
Maybe I was somewhere in the range of the 10th to 20th best turbo player in the tournament.
Did I run well. Yes, you can see that for the most part I ran very well. But I think in a turbo structure you have to, but I also picked my spots carefully, laddered very cleverly and changed gears at the right times.
But did I play with a fierce determination to win, to never ever give up, and to get the most out of my ability? Yes I did.
Last edited by SageDonkey; 02-08-2012 at 09:41 PM.
