Out of the 2k

I played the 2k No Limit Hold'em event today and it was downhill from the start. With only 4k in starting chips, the pressure is on from the very first hand and there is very little room to maneuver.

About 15 minutes into the event, I played my first meaningful hand. An agressive young player open raised from under the gun to 200, and three players called the raise in front of me. I looked down to see JJ on the button and decided to try to win the already sizable pot preflop. I made it 950 to go, knowing I only had to sweat the original raiser. The original raiser tanked for about 3 minutes before shoving his starting stack all-in. I felt like his range at this point in the tourney was AA,KK,QQ, and AK and it was a fairly easy fold. He told me later that he had QQ and I believe him. So right from the start, I was down to 3,000.

Over the next 90 minutes, I had only three playable hands (besides a couple of steals and limps from late position) and all three were very difficult to play. I had 9's twice and 8's once, and each time there was a standard early position raise in front of me. These are very difficult hands to play in a short-stack event when there is a raise in front of you from early position. No option is ideal as the stacks are not deep enough to just call for a set, reraising exposes much too much of your stack, and folding mid-pairs to one raise makes your overall play too tight and weak. As a result, the proper play is highly read dependent. I reraised with 9's once (sensing weakness), called with 9's the other time, folding to a cb on a 10 high board (sensing strength), and called with 8's, raising the cb on the J high flop (again, sensing weakness). After these three hands, I was back to my starting stack of 4k, and felt like I had a pretty good read on the table and just needed a few hands to do some damage. Finally, just before the end of level 2, I woke up to AdAh under the gun. I limped (as the table had been very agressive) and the player immediately behind me made it 450 to go (blinds of 50/100). My plan was to trap with a smooth call preflop and a check raise on the flop, but the small blind reraised to 1,200 before the action ever got back to me. I didn't want to play the pot 3-handed so I reraised all-in. The original raiser folded and the reraiser insta-called. I turned up my bullets and he said "no good", showing the AcAs. Ridiculous. I turned a diamond flush draw, but missed on the river and we chopped it up. At the first break I had about 4,500, which was a bit below average as we had lost almost 400 players from the original starting field of 1,600 (which is a good indicator of how much pressure there is right from the start).

Level 3 was tough for me as I couldn't buy a hand, and when I did try to make something happen (with AQ once and 8d9d another time), I ran into real hands and got reraised. My stack dwindled back down below 3,000, but I was determined to tighten up and keep fighting. I built some momentum during level 4 as I semi-bluffed a weak lead in a 4-way limped pot and then reraised an early position raiser with QQ, taking both pots down without resistance. I started attacking limps and weak raises more agressively, and by the end of level 4, I had built my stack up to 5,800 without showing down a single hand. I took a look at the tournament board and noticed we were already down to ~700 players (average stack of around 9k), but I felt good about where I stood heading into the second break. Unfortunately, my second break was a bit extended. In the last hand of Level 4, I had AK in early position and made a standard raise to 650 (blinds of 100/200, 25 ante), and it folded around to the sb who went all-in for about 7k. I called pretty quickly as I didn't think he would overraise so much with A's or K's, and I felt like I was way ahead of his range. He sheepishly showed 55 (a pretty terrible play in my opinion), and we were off to the races. He flopped a 5 and I was drawing dead on the turn. The unfortunate reality about tournament poker is that you have to run well to go deep against good players (especially if you can't build a big stack early). I never really got things going today (as my high point was 5,800 before getting cracked), but I was proud that I didn't give up with my short-stack, which dipped below 2,500 on two separate occasions. Two pros at my table (one online and one live), essentially gave up after losing most of their stacks in tough pots. The online pro reraised his remaining 2k all-in with J9 (knowing he was going to get called), and the live pro shipped it in with AJ over a reraise (not as bad, but still bad) and was insta-called by KK. It is very easy to make plays like this after losing momentum in a tournament, but every time you do, you lower your long-term expected return (which is why mental focus is so key).

Next up is the $1,500 No Limit Hold'em 6-handed event. The good news about this event is that I feel very comfortable playing 6-handed, and believe I have a bigger edge against my opponents in this structure (my standard online cash games are 6-max). You have to open up your game in this format and weaker players will make more mistakes as a result, which can be capitalized upon. The bad news is that the starting stacks are even shorter tomorrow with 3,000 chips from the get-go, so the play early will be critical once again.