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Richard 'Strummer9' Herbert's Blog

WSOPE day2.

Well another day of great ups and great down, and sadly the end of the dream of a WSOPE 2009 bracelet. I was really looking forward to play on day 2, after playing so well on day 1 and having a healthy stack I was feeling pretty good, this feeling only got better after seeing the table I was drawn on, if I could get anything close to a “weak” table, well in this field this was as good as I could hope for: Seat 1: Andrew Lichtenberger-won a $1m at this years WSOP.
Seat 2: J Keys –emerging English pro with over $300k in cashes to his name
Seat 3: Ray Dehkharghani – Vegas pro over $500k in winnings
Seat 4: Thiago Nishijima – Brazilian pro with over $300k in winnings.
Seat 5: Jason Lavalee – unkown player.
Seat 6: Teddy Sheringham – Footballing legend whos never won jack sh*t at poker and I know why!!!!
Seat 7: Eric Liu – American pro with close to $1m in earnings including an EPT London final table.
Seat 8: Richard Herbert
Seat 9: Michael Tureniec-Swedish pro with over $1.5m in winnings including a 2nd in last years EPT London.

 

 My tournament revolved around four pivotal hands, and all of them very different. The table got of to a slow start with everyone taking a turn to raise and steal the blinds and antis. After an hour or so of this the game seemed to step up a gear with the 3,4,5 and 6 bet pre flop becoming the norm! My first major hand came in this first hours play. Seat three raised the standard 2000 (blinds 600/300 75 anti). Ive got AdJd on the button and make it 6500 to go which Ray calls, strangely this was the first and only time during the tournament I played AJ, for one reason or another whenever I was dealt it up to this point I had to lay it down. The flop was J x x. Ray checked, now I put him on nothing more than a small pair, I think any other hand he pushes or folds due to his stack size and thus by checking im hoping to get a bluff from him. The turn is a Q, again im not to worried about this card as im 90% sure where I am in the hand, he then bets out 11k, which I call. The river is a 7, Ray now pushes all in for another 25k. As he pushed all in his eye brow twitched. The same thing happened to me yesterday in the first hand I played where I made a $5k bluff on the river with nothing, I got a little twitch which I was very conscious off………not that it really mattered as I was bluffing into a never folding set of aces!!!! So after running the hand over again I could only put him on one hand beating me and that was a set of 7s, but that twitch ruled that hand out……..so I make a call that if im wrong im down to dirt on 20k, but if im right im upto 90k, I call and hes got pocket 5s. After a couple of pre flop raises and blind steals I hit my tourney high of 98k and im playing and feeling good. On the last hand of this level I play what I feel was the second pivotal hand of the day. Lavalee (very LAG player) opens up to 2000 and is quickly raised by Eric Liu to 6k. I look down and see JJ. Both players have got around 35k. Normally against 2 such aggressive players im betting here willing to stack off, but this hand was different in that the hand previous Tureniec had had his JJ smashed all in pre flop by Teddy Sherringhams QJ. After thinking it through I decided I wasn’t up putting 35k in with JJ pre flop and folded. It was folded back to Lavalee who thought for a few moments then pushed all in with Eric quickly passing…………..speaking to Lavalee later he told me he had AQ, but im not sure how true that statement was. After the break its 800/400 blinds with a 100 anti and the action as really warmed up. This suits me as I can resort to my much preferred game of sitting and waiting, I think in such deep stacked events on such an agro table mistakes will be made and a solid game can take advantage of these mistakes. An hour or so into the level I play probably the most important hand of the tournament. UTG Eric makes it 3,000 to go. Next to act I find AhKh. I flat call pretty sure that someone is going to squeeze. Keys wasn’t about to let me down as he makes if 9000 to go. Eric folds. I dwell for a few moments before making it 23k to go. This was the spot I wanted, id played very solid poker, shown only 2 or 3 hands so far and all where quality hands, so in this spot my play must look very strong, personally im playing this like KK or AA never mind AK soooooooted, and I know the players here think the same. So when Keys pushes for 100k and my tournament life I can truly only put him on AA !!!! I think long and hard, but to be honest as soon as he shoves I know im passing, lets face it hes not here with AQ!!!! But for effect I give it a bit of Hollywood before folding. That was to be the last real starting hand I see. The next  two hours are a cascade of nothing hands. At one stage I was dealt 35 three hands on the bounce followed by 82 twice. The hands dealt got so bad that if I saw a picture card my heart started to race!!!! Obviously even though I was being dealt nothing I was still trying to tick over with well times steals and three bets, but find these spots was difficult. The only time it was folded to me on the button I actually had a playable hand in 10cJc, so raised only to get an all in from Tureniec. Also defending my blinds wasn’t happening either, again the one time I found a good spot to defend  it was bad timing. A new player joined the table and he was very active raising pre flop flop around 50% of his hands. After 30mins or so people started to 3 bet him and he would lay down. So on my big blind I find 10c4c. He raises, all fold and I 3 bet 8000. With a blink of an eye hes all in!!!!!! But its still deep stack poker, im still on 45-50k and im still very happy with how im playing. Then we come to the third pivotal hand, and again it’s a hand I don’t play. UTG raised to 3,000 and gets 2 callers, im in the small blind with kh9h. Normally in such a spot im going to play and either call or raise, but because my chip stack had shrunk I was playing a little tighter than I liked and passed even though it was as good a hand as id seen in  long time, and was also offering a good spot to play. Needless to say the flop was k 9 x and there was action on the flop, for sure a big pot that I missed out on and a pot that would have opened up my game again. Still you cant dwell on what might have happened, I still had 50k as we reached the final level of day two. We are down to the last 90 players, ive still got over 30BB and still well in the game. Still the hands don’t arrive, but I pick up a couple of pots pre flop to maintain the stack. Im then dealt KhJh, trust me when I looked at this hand it looked BIG! Forget that KJ is known as the amateur hand and that im out of position, ive seen nothing for hours and im playing this hand. Its raised for early position and Sherringham calls the 3,000. I call also. The flop is K J 7 rainbow. I check, utg checks and Sherringham leads out 8,000. Now Teddy had been at the table all day and well the truth is he got lucky in two huge pots, one where he 5 bet all in with QJ and beat JJ and another where he called an all in with a ace high flush draw and hit, but over all he seemed to be paying pretty tight, thus I wasn’t 100%  sure if my KJ was good as his range included 77……..but it also included K10 and KQ! The turn was a 10, I checked and Teddy bet 18k (ish) so it was either all in or fold for me, well I wasn’t passing top two pair here, I felt I was either losing to a set of 7s or im crushing him so I push. His snap call tells me im beat, but when he turns over 9 8 os im a little gutted! A bloody belly buster! Don’t get me wrong ive played the hand for full value which obviously runs the risk of a suck out, but the hand just didn’t fit in to the game he’d been playing all day, a very losing call in mid position on a table that had been squeezing such spots all day, a strange call pre flop by Teddy on this table in my book. Naturally disappointed, ive played good again and gone pretty deep with a good stack in the toughest field ever seen in Europe, but no cigar!! But there is so many positives for me to take from this event, the main ones being that I know I can still mix it with the best and knowing that my game as come on hugely in the last two years, and lets not forget that Peter Eastgate knew ME by sight!!!! Its also brought me around to the conclusion that I really need to focus more on getting out and playing these big events, I think im a pretty good cash player at the mid levels, but I know im a dam good player in the biggest tournaments’! Ive talked much this year about it being my year, and you know even though I don’t have the result to back up my talk ive certainly found the belief to back it up…………..watch this space!!!!

 

Published Oct 01 2009, 01:43 PM by Strummer

Comments

 

ericredkite said:

The year is not over :-) On the KJ hand, did you not consider shipping it on the flop, 2pair is very vulnerable with two cards to come, even if the flop is "safe". Someone can have the other card paired with an ace and hit a bigger 2pair, they could hit a set let alone runner runners or the gutshot that got you ! See you at the DT Final :-)

October 4, 2009 10:00 AM
 

Strummer said:

well there was a number of ways i could have played the hand diffrent, there was enough money in the pot pre flop to justify a push all in there. As for the flop yep of course pushing was an option, but after going over the hand i put him on a very tight range, KQ, K10, KJ 77, for me it was one of this hands or a complete bluff thus to get the full value out of my hand against hands im beating i dont want to scare him off. Again obviously i know that my hand is vunrable against certain hands, but i think he raises with AQ pre flop and hes missed with Q10 and i certainly didnt put him on 89.......infact after spending all day playing with him i still cant put him on 89 os in this position

October 7, 2009 8:30 AM
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