The Shark Tank

I have made it through to Day Two of the $1,500 limit poker event. I think somewhere in the area of 180 players remain and a bit less than half of those will get paid. I had a great level nine and a grueling level 10. I ended the day at 18,300 where average is around 14.5k or so. Early on, my edge on the field was comically vast. Many of these players had a very limited grasp on some fairly basic limit concepts. As Matthew commented to me, by the first forty minutes he had seen at least one mistake by every player at his table. There were so many hands I don’t think I can even remember most of them.

I made some plays that I consider fairly standard that seemed to put other players on tilt. In one hand on level 6, I raised with TT from the hijack and the SB three bet. I figure he wants to isolate me and price the big blind out, so I four bet him which he caps (five bets is the cap here). The flop comes down AK5 and when he bets, I raise. My thinking is that if he has QQ or JJ, I might get him to fold to continued aggression and if he doesn’t then I might get to showdown cheap. This seems like a pretty normal line to me, but he really hated it. The turn is a Jack, which gives me a gutshot draw to add to my collection, so I check behind with three overcards on the table. The river is a Queen, giving me the nut straight. He bets, I raise, he calls and shows AK for top two and he develops a significant attitude problem. I also made some three bet isolation raises with small pairs that also tilted people and some very standard calldowns with middling pairs on boards that missed their range most of the time.

One thing I saw was that river bets were usually extreme strength or total bluffs. If you have a good idea of their range, you can often tell which it is.

I think I pretty much kept my stack above average the whole way down. I was the last man standing at my original table, which never broke all day long. Barry Schulman was one of the last ones to bust from my original table. He was a pretty good limit player, much better than the average standard, but he was still fairly predictable post-flop. I’d say he didn’t put me in a lot of tricky situations post-flop, like many Stars players at 30/60 and above will do. As the tables broke, my table got considerably tougher. I played with a guy who looks a bit like Mark Newhouse (but isn’t) who was clearly a fairly skilled limit poker player. I’m pretty sure one of the two Asian lags at my table is a name pro, but I don’t know him.

Its obvious to me that Limit poker is my best game. I felt quite confident I knew what I wanted to do and what the other players were doing pretty much the whole time.

Matthew busted sometime after the last break. He stopped by and said that he had Aces cracked. Hopefully I can keep it up tomorrow.

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