« Kevin Ngo

Poker Session #11 - New Acquaintances

21 Feb 2014

Final Table, slowly growing on me as my favorite poker joint for its softness, held a Friday night $10K double-guarantee, meaning the house chips into the prize pool if there is not money from the players to match $10K. But enough flocked to make it $15K. There were 180 runners, and after six hours of play, I was knocked out around 28th place. This is called bubbling, when someone is knocked out right before the money. Though I had to do the walk of shame empty-handed at midnight, I became acquaintances with a pro. I find as I play more and more, I’m starting to get to know some people around town.

6pm $10000 Guaranteed - Busted on the Bubble

After talking about a hand about punishing limpers (putting in a big raise to earn the dead money in the middle from people calling preflop with weak hands), a girl on my right and I started talking a bit about poker backgrounds. Though I play on the side, she plays full-time for a living, completely crushing the game. With her from a psychology/accounting background and me from a computer science background, we figured we might be able to learn off of each other so we exchanged contact information to meet up sometime and maybe play a home game.

There was a dealer who randomly guessed my name correctly from my looks.

Analyzing the Re-Steal

Though she knocked me out when I attempted a resteal from the big blind. She was on the button and put in a raise of 3.2x the big blind, which is pretty large at the late stages of a tournament. Since the button can raise with a pretty wide range, I opted to shove with 34s for 3x the raise since I needed to make a move soon with my short stack. Unfortunately, she had a good holding of AJo. Which isn’t too bad considering I’m getting my money in 40/60, but I could definitely have chosen a better spot with someone else.

At least I could have done a stop and go. I had plenty of chips for fold equity.

She went on to win the tournament for $4K.

First-In Vigorish

What I need to be strict on when contemplating a shove in the late stages of a tourney is first-in vigorish. That means raising when folded to you which is advantageous because players after need a better hand to call than to raise themselves (related to the gap concept). Whomever bets first gets it. A resteal might have been okay against a reg like her but I should have targeted the other fish who generally aren’t great at adjusting to late stages.

I went home and stayed up until 6am working on Sriracha, getting ready to play again on Saturday.

Session Conclusion