Howard’s Tournament

Last year around this time, while I was still in my play money poker phase, a co-worker invited me to a poker party.  Brent had a friend from a past job, who lived across the street from Howard, who held a party once a year. According to Howard, it is a party first and a poker tournament second.  That’s true.  He makes sure a lot of people go home with money.  The buy in is just $55 and he provides food and liquor and all the chips and tables.  He has a raffle and last year he even had a masseuse (who gave free backrubs).  It’s a great night.

For a small world feel.  Howard married the sister of the girl I took to senior prom.  There were a bunch of people there from my high school and it was very fun.

Last year I busted out of the tournament around the middle of the field.  It was very uncomfortable.  I didn’t know what I was doing and I got killed.  I played at one of the loser’s tables and ended up chopping for first and went home with a little more money in my pocket than when I got there.  Bottom line: I played like someone who played play money poker a lot and didn’t really know what he was doing.

I was excited to go back.  It would be an interesting test of whether I’ve gotten any better.

On my first table, I was the captain.  By accident.  I resolved to play tight for the first part of the night.  Only my first hand was QQ.  My second was AQo, then KK, then AJs, then AQo, then 99, then AQo again.  People wanted to limp.  I kept raising it up.  I was raising close to 3X the BB plus 1BB for every limper.  If someone min-raised, I counted that as 2 limpers.  Then I’d vary it just a little.  It wasn’t making me very popular.  It was great to have the loose table image.  I raised a ton for the first 45 mintues and then folded almost everything I had for the next hour, but my image held strong.  They made it very clear that I still had my image.  I got great action for all my hands.  Apart from that, I came up with profiles for every player at the table and determined how to play against each of them.  I busted out two of them and by the third hour of the tournament I was in the top three of chips.  I held strong for a long time.

Unfortunately, I ended up at a table with Howard himself.  Howard knows how to play aggressive.  He was pushing the action hard.  Unfortunately I ended up making a few moves at bad times and ran into Howard.  He ended up with about half of my stack.  I did end up at the final table and cashed, but finished 6th or 7th.

Afterwards, I went to find out if any of the losers tables were playing.  There was one player sitting at one.  Howard reserves $60 from the buy-ins for three losers tables to have $20 prizes each.  There was $20 and 1 player at the table.  I asked if he wanted to play heads up and we agreed to play 1/2 with 20 chip stacks.  As we counted out the chips, 3 players joined us.  We all pitched in another $5 so the winner would take $45.  We had 3 players who were playing tight and trying to keep their stacks and then 2 of us knew that with just 10 big blinds it was pretty much shove or fold.  I decided to gamble a lot.  I was up to 50 chips and then back down to 4 chips then up and down and up and down.  Eventually I got heads up with a nitty girl.  I was still screwing around and playing for fun.  Then she said something like “I’m really good, I’m pretty sure I’m gonna’ beat you.”  She didn’t seem to be kidding, so I decided I needed to crush her.  I played a solid heads up game and pushed her around a lot.  I pushed all my chips in a lot.  I raised every pot.  If she called pre-flop and bet on the flop I folded.  She had no idea how to trap.  It was fun (and pretty easy).

In the end I ended up more than doubling my entry fee and having a great time.

But the real bottom line: I’m much much much better than just a year ago.  I was totally comfortable the whole time.  I knew what to do and when to do it.  I made good bluffs and good calls and good laydowns.  I love friendly games because people show you when you’ve made good laydowns.  I knew how to read people and I knew how to maximize my profits from people’s mistakes.  I did make a couple of bad moves, but you have to make some moves and they won’t always work.