Holliston Poker Tour

9 HPT players took on Foxwoods today, the 10 am Tourney (T5000 in chips with 20 min blinds) was just about full (215 players), we had one player out on the first hand (I’ll let him explain it…), one player made a damn good run at the $5k first place payout to take 5th, and the rest of us, well, if you don’t make the money does it really matter where you go out? We all had a good time and for those that made their way to the cash tables after busting out of the tourney, I understand that combined they took enough away to cover the tournament buy-in for all of us….

A fun day for all and a successful day for some.

Let me ask you guys this, the hand I went out on (I can’t seem to stop re-evaluating my play) went as follows:

Blinds were 200/400 with 50 ante (1100 in the pot to start).

I had JJ under the gun with a 10.5k chipstack, most at the table had 1500 to 7k with 1 maybe 2 other 10k stacks.

I raised to 2000, folds all around to the other big stack(10k) he reraised to 5000. Folds back to me. I had seen him play some pretty crappy stuff, he was relatively new to the table and had shown down a couple of very marginal hands. I figured this was as good a spot as any and pushed. He turned over AA, the turn, the flop and that fickle wench the river did nothing for me and I was crippled with 525 left (and I got the door prize of the 50 ante and the 400 big blind for my next hand) needless to say I was out next hand (although I almost tripled up, but that fickle wench the river has a close relative, the turn, which gave one of my opponents a third 8 to beat my QJ with a J on the flop…a fellow HPT’er was also carnage in that same hand….That’s why I love poker some times…from Hero to Zero in 2 hands…. any way back to my self analysis, did that re-raise scream of over pair? Should I have called to see the flop? Should I have…dare I say it…folded my JJ?

The way I saw it, that re-raise said I have either AA, KK, QQ, JJ, TT, AK, AQ, AJ, and maybe even AT (soooted of course). According to Pokerstove (Hold’Em hand odds calculator) I was a 54 to 46 favorite against that tight range (which is the top 8% of hands). Add in KQ and KJ (unlikely, I was stepping up the aggression following a few rounds of fairly tight poker, but certainly no way near the level of aggression a few of my table mates were showing and hemorrhaging chips at) and its bumped to 55 to 45 in my favor. With the 1100 in blinds antes, my 2000 raise, and his 5000 re-raise, there was 8100 in the pot and 8000 in front of me and 5000 remaining in front of him. I was certain that if I pushed he would call, which  gave me a slight pot odds to card odds edge, but was it enough to risk my tournament on? Clearly I felt so as I announced “all-in”, but now…not so much.

Interestingly, QQ is a 63% favorite and KK is a 72% favorite against that same range of hands.

As some of you know, the way I play, even if I called it out of position, the under card flop would have resulted in an all-in from me anyway, so the calling result would have been the same.  I guess I should take my lumps and move on…

Anyway, enough of the boo hooing, it was fun day and and we all enjoyed ourselves.

The next LIVE HPT is tentatively scheduled for February 29 (HPT Live happens every other month…leap year is so lame it can only handle once every 4 years). I am thinking a knockout Tourney this time, 35 to prize pool, 5 to knockouts, you get 5 points for every person you knock out…thoughts?

Filed under: HPT Field Trip