A Tale of Justice

Our dance competition in Stockerau was much fun but our own results could have been better. The german team in general had a quite good night as we got two couples to the finals placing 2nd and 6th.

I'm still in Austria because I extended my stay and played another €20+5 tournament at the Poker Royale. I lost a big pot in the beginning when I missed a huge draw and was down from 8,000 to about 6,500 after just a few hands. I wasn't able to play a single hand till level 4. With blinds 250/500 I found AKs in LP. It was raised to 1,000 with another caller. I went all with my remaining 5,000 and was called by both players. And finally my AK nemesis became a winner. I flopped the nut flush against JJ and KQ and more than trippled up to 17,000 chips.

After the break I raised TT in MP and got called from Mr. Crazy (He had just busted a player before the break when he went all-in with 68 vs. AQ and caught 6's on flop and turn). The flop came T67. I checked my set, expecting him to bet but he just checked. Turn was an 8. I bet 2,000 into a 4,000 pot and he raised it to 4,000. I made it 8,000 and he called. River was a 4 and I put him all-in for just a few more chips. He called and a set wasn't good enough here as he had called my initial raise with 45 off-suit.

Down to less then 7,000 my stack was reduced more and more by the blinds and I finally went all-in with Q6 for just 4,000 and got called by AJ. No help and out on 86th of 136 after around two hours.

Justice - Part I

I wasn't involved in that but liked it nevertheless. Shortly before I busted there was a hand between Mr. Crazy-Chipleader and another big stack. Guess what? ... Mr. Crazy flopped a set of 3's but had to pay off his opponent who went all-in on the river after he rivered a straight with 46. Back to medium-stack for Mr. Crazy. That must have hurt ... I know for sure that this hurts ;-)

Justice - Part II

This time I was involved. I was playing at the €1/1 cashgame for a few minutes as to my delight Mr. Crazy (who just had busted from the tournament too) joined the game. The funny part of the following two hours was that he made money from the others by playing crazy and being a luckbox but transfered a good chunck of his winnings to me. I can't go into details for obvious reasons but I was controlling him from the beginning and obviously he never understood completely what happend to him. Unfortunately he left after about two hours and the table eventually broke. As I had already trippled my buy-in I called it a night.

I ran the TT hand from the tournament through my head several times and decided that I was somewhat unlucky here. There's always risk involved if you slowplay a hand. But slowplaying a set of Tens isn't a huge mistake on that kind of a flop. Should I have expected that my opponent was holding 45 (or maybe T9) on a 678 board? I knew that this guy had a wide range of hands but calling a pre-flop raise with that hand was nothing I expected even from that guy. Well, at least until that moment.

In general it was a good night. I made a nice win and played way better at the cashgames than two nights before. I was able to control a crazy player and take advantage of him at the right time without getting into risk & gamble mode. Looks like I feel more and more comfortable with the cashgames (at least live).