HGPA February Invitational

Friday night was this month’s HGPA tournament. To make a long story short, I had a great time over the course of nine and a half hours, and made it into the money. We had two tables worth of people initially, and once elimination play got us down to one table a lively cash game appeared to break out in “loser’s lounge”. I utterly dominated my initial table, taking almost all of their money into the merged single table, but I cracked at the end during three-way play.

I probably should have been able to take the top spot, but a combination of three things broke me down: 1) I need more practice at 3-way Hold ‘Em, 2) I got rivered, against significant odds, on a particularly large hand, and 3) at around 2:30AM I started to get a bit mentally sloppy. I may chat a bit about a couple of these hands at the end of this, just to play with the CardConverter plugin that I got after seeing Roach make a card plugin look so good–although he’s clearly using a different plugin than I am. (He’s using the War Room plugin, which renders cards as images, and I wanted to avoid doing that for RSS readability…)

The winner this time, as at each of the last 5 or 6 tournaments, was someone who had never previously won. And now his name, or rather his poker nickname, adorns the trophy.

Oh, yeah, we have a trophy for tournaments. It looks like this:

Each tournament winner gets their chosen moniker (or at least, as much of it as can fit on one line!) engraved on a dated shield that is added to the trophy.

Here you can see the last four winners, including Friday’s:

As you can see we get a variety of different naming styles chosen, from full proper name, to Neil’s special initial + title form, through to this week’s “just the nickname” style.

For the record, the girl at the engraving shop thinks “Speedbag” is something dirty, not a boxer’s training tool. This is one of those situations where you have to just let it go, because arguing the point just makes things worse.

As for why getting the engraving was my problem? Well, there’s a certain division of labour among the HGPA guys. Drake is our roper, who gets the bums in the seats, as it were, for both regular weekly games (which he typically hosts) and tournaments. Neil, at least for the last couple of tourneys, has been our host, and has provided space, music, entertainment for the loser’s lounge, a second table (when needed), and chips for the second table (when needed). I provide my own snazzy chips, and a bit of tournament organization: setting up initial chip counts, blind schedules, payout levels, managing the $$, etc. I also handle the trophy, and I typically provide some fun bonus prizes.

Bonus prizes, you ask?

Yeah, I usually bring a few prizes: something for the first person to bust out, something for the first person to take someone out, and a little something extra for the tournament winner (to go with the cash). For example, this month I had a first bust out prize made up of:

[At this point for some reason WordPress ate the rest of this entry, and I have had to try to reconstruct it from memory. This version will doubtless be somewhat different from what I wrote before.]

• Annie Duke’s “How To Play With The Big Boys” DVD
• a can of general purpose lubricant
• a bag of hand warmers

In the past the “first bust out” prizes have included such things as: a St. Jude medallion, a deck of Barbie playing cards, a copy of Poker For Dummies, an “I’m The Fish” cup, a dunce cap, consolation booze, etc.

(I’m always looking for suggestions for funny prizes in this category.)

The “first to take someone out” prize has been, at different times, the Sharpshooter prize (which came with a classy set of old school cap guns), the Poker Hero prize (with Adam West Batman DVD), etc.

And this month’s winner got, in addition to half the money, a bottle of Pommery POP Pink Champagne. (I tried some of that–it wasn’t worth the cost, fyi.)

Since I was the first to bust someone out, I got one of my own prizes, but as J-rod busted someone out at the other table nigh simultaneously, I passed the prize on to him.

And what about those hands that cost me the top place?

All right. The final three players were, in order around the table: Bob, Speedbag, and me.

On the hand where mathematics failed me I was JX before the flop, and was big blind. Bob calls, and Speedbag completes. The flop comes down JX4 rainbow (no straight showing). So I’ve got top pair, and no overcard on the board. Speedbag checks, I check, Bob goes all in.

Now, I know Bob, and I read him as playing position for the blinds. He wouldn’t do it without something, so he’s probably paired one of the rags and is holding an overcard. I put him on K4. (If he had a set or something equally strong, he would have tried to reel us in, instead of hitting it that hard.)

Speedbag folds. I chew it over for a bit, look at Bob’s stack (which is about half the size of mine) and decided to call him. It’s not a confident call, but I make it.

I can tell immediately that I was right, and that Bob isn’t happy about being called. He flips up A4. So now, there are two cards to come and only 6 of the ones left in the deck can help him, with 39 there to help me. I’m 73% or so to win. The turn comes up a blank. Now I’m 86% to win.

The river comes up A, giving Bob two pair, and the hand. Bob actually got up and did a “Riverdance“.

I’m pretty sure I didn’t play that wrong.

The other hand was definitely played wrong, but I’m putting some of the blame for that on fatigue.

This time Speedbag is BB, and I have As2s. I decide to see the flop and call. Bob folds. Speedbag makes a small raise on his option. I figure he’s sitting on low pockets, since I haven’t seen him pre-flop raise anything, including Big Slick, that wasn’t wired.

Flop comes up 4s8sJh. So now I’m four to the ace flush, three to the wheel, with an overcard. Speedbag makes a smallish bet, and I put him on either a low set, or the same flush draw as me with high suited connectors. I’m hoping it’s the later. I raise back to him, a rather more, and he cold calls.

The turn comes up 3d. So now I’m four to the flush, 4 to the wheel, and with that ace still kicking around. I figure any spade (9 outs) and I’ve got the nut flush, any 5 (4 outs) and I’ve got the nut straight, and even if I don’t hit, I’ve got a good chance of scaring him out after the river, since he’s playing quite timidly. Speedbag again makes a small bet, and I raise back to him. He calls again.

The river comes Js. Now I’ve got the ace flush, and I think I have the nuts; an error I put down entirely to it being 3AM–I was wanting a spade so hard that when I saw the spade, I failed to recognize that it was also a jack.

Speedbag comes in with another smallish bet, and I think about coming back all-in (since I think I have the nuts). I decide that might scare him, so I might as well try to build the pot. I come back with a large, but not all-in raise. He calls.

I confidently show my ace flush, and he shows his 44, and reaches for the money.

Damn that was dumb. All the signs were there–I even put him on that hand early on, and then failed to notice that he would have improved to the boat. That’s a beginner’s mistake: playing only my own cards, and not my opponent’s. Sigh. Oh well, I’m getting old (hell, I turn 33 on Friday) and I’m not used to being up until 3AM anymore, much less to being alert at that time.

Still, I had a real blast all-in-all, and still came out with enough prize cash to cover the prizes I brought, my dinner, and my drinks. And I got more time in the endgame, which means more practice at the weakest part of my tournament skills. So, a pretty good Friday, all things considered.