USD150+20 Asian Poker Tour Report

As I’ve blogged about it earlier, I played in the USD150+20 tournament yesterday. I was so glad that the organizer didn’t stick with their earlier announced tournament structure and had started with 2500 chips and using a blind structure different from the main event’s and more suited for lower chip stacks. I’d say the tournament director has done a great job in this area. Anyway, he’s quite a well-known tournament director in the poker world.

The tournament has more Singaporeans playing than the earlier USD400+40 supersatellite tournament that I witness the day before, though still significantly lower than the number of foreigners that are playing. I guess it’s probably because of the lower buy-ins. Nonetheless, when the prize structure was announced in about hour 3, 1st prize was a whopping USD12K!

I was seated at table 18 in the start, which has roughly equal number of Asians (presumably locals) and foreigners. I was card dead for almost the whole hour 1, didn’t even have many marginal playable hands. And when I actually had a hand in that hour a pocket pair between top pair and 2nd pair, my opponent got a full house. Anyway, I lost the minimum that hand and was glad that I played well.

I was down to 900 chips at blinds level 3: 75-150 (I think), and had to push all in with the only playable cards I have been getting for almost half an hour after that last hand. I was holding A-Q suited diamonds. And got called by A-K of hearts. At that time, I thought that was it. My tournament is over in about 1.5 hour. No regrets though, it was just that I didn’t get to play much without catching any playable cards. Lucky me, I caught a Q on the flop and the caller never catched up. To make things worse for him, I busted him out about 3 hands later with a top pair on the flop and he pushed all in with pocket pair of 5s. I took pretty long to call as I was putting him on a flush draw and I didn’t want to gamble for my tournament life. But I called, after playing the hands in my head for a good 1-2 mins and decided that he had a pair or just pushing out of desperation. I’m glad I was right. Too bad for him that he had to pay me off twice.

And then it was all ok for me for the next couple of hours. Got moved to another table where almost everyone there had more chips than I do, except 1 or 2 shorter stacks. It was bad for me and my chip stacks once again dwindled to less than 10x BB (big blind, for those non poker-savvy) and had to push all in with a pair of pocket 8s. Got called by A-Q. It was pretty much a coin flip with a slight favourite to me. My hand held up and I had about 16-18x BB. It was around about 3-4 hours into the tournament and the blinds have gotten really high up. Everywhere you can hear people going all in and getting busted out. So I decided this is the time for me to get aggresive and gather chip stacks for the later stages of the tournament. I pushed in late position a few times with really marginal hands like K-4 offsuit, just hoping to steal the blinds, but kept getting called. I did that a few times, and kept getting called. It was pretty unlucky there. Had I successfully stole the blinds for 3 or 4 times with the tightening up of the play by the players, my chip stacks would have been really healthy. Even though I got caught while stealing, I still managed to catch some cards and win some small pots here and there, so my chip stacks wasn’t that bad.

It was close to hour 5 and I was on big blind. A tight guy in 3rd position raised me with a standard raise of 3x BB. I squeezed my cards and saw A-Q offsuit and took awhile and decided to call. I knew he got cards and wasn’t trying to steal so I didn’t reraise him and just called to see the flop. Flop came 3-9-J (or somthing similar) all spades. As I was on the BB, it was my turn to act. I took a 2nd look at my cards (probably a tell right here) and saw that my pocket Q is a spade. I was thinking should I push right here to pick up the pots which is rather significant at this stage of the tournament and with antes or should I just play conservatively and just check to him. I knew he must have had something, and I thought it could be A-x, smaller pocket pairs or maybe even huge pocket pairs. I analyzed each possibilities carefully in my head and decided that in all of these cases, unless he has flopped a flush or he has a pair with the Ace of spade, I have a lot of outs. If he has top pair, I have overcards to bust his top pair. I could catch either a A or Q in the turn or river (that gives me 6 outs). Else, if he didn’t have the Ace of spade, I have a flush draw, which easily gives me a good 9-outers. So in all, I could have easily from 6-13 outs! And I knew if I checked to him, he would’ve bet out to me no matter what and I would’ve never known if he’s only making a play on me or if he really did have cards. After about 3-5 mins of analyzing, I decided to push all in, with about 1.5 more than the pot size at that moment. My opponent has somewhat similar chip stack as mine and I knew it would be hard for him to risk his tournament life on a top pair (a pair of Jacks) or even a flush draw (had he hold the ace of spade). He was taking really long time too and when I noticed that he took a 2nd look at his hole cards, I knew that I was safe as he didn’t hit the flush. The longer he took to think, the longer I was convinced that I have made the right decision and I thought he would’ve folded it to me. And then suddenly I heard he said called. And to my horror, he turned over J-J. He’s flopped trips. Even so, I still have 9 outs, to hit a spade on the turn or river. It was about 65%-35% with advantage to him. My hand never improved and I was busted out in the 287-people tournament in 65-ish place and played for more than 5 hours.

I felt like shit at that point in time as I was so close to the money - 27 players would make the money, but I was ok when I knew that I was busted out not because of my mistakes. I normally would feel really bad for half a day if I made a mistake in poker. After wandering out for about 10 minutes, I went back into the poker room (a temporary one at Meritus Mandarin Hotel) to watch and support my friend, Erique, who was still in the tournament albeit with a really short chip stack. The hand he was busted, he was all in with 2 callers. He held A-Q, the other 2 had 3-5 and A-3. He was in such a good position to triple up. But the board had to spit out a 3 and he was busted in 50-ish place.

We got our consolation in the dinner. The players were given meal vouchers during the game and the dinner was really good. It was a buffet dinner with sushi, lobster, oyster, muzzels, pork ribs, etc. Even though we lost USD170 that night, it was such a wonderful experience and I had fun too interacting to them foreigners, most of them travel all the way from Europe and Australia just to play in this event. Some of them don’t even know where Singapore was before coming here.

Asian Poker Tour is still happening right now with the Main Event starting tomorrow. I might be going over to watch the final table on Friday. Looking forward to my next live tournament play.

Now back to my presentation preparation. I’ll have to do a project presentation later at 1pm. Then it’s mugging time for exams is only 1 week away.