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View Full Version : A 2+2 success story (long)


gumpzilla
02-12-2005, 01:05 AM
Hi, everybody. I've been lurking here for a couple of months and have enjoyed the content quite a bit. I've been playing online for six months, primarily $20 NL SNGs at Paradise with the occasional NL ring game, MTT or limit draw ring game thrown in. I tend to employ a slightly different strategy than seems to be commonly recommended here for early SNG play, where I play a lot of fit-or-fold kind of hands early on if the opportunity arises.

Tonight, however, I decided to employ the super-tight early strategy in extremis to make a phone call, having decided that the emotional state I was in without the phone call was not really conducive to good poker anyway. The pace of play seemed to be pretty slow, so I hit the Post & Fold button about 5 hands in and made my call. Much to my surprise, I returned to find four players left at Level 6 (100/200), with myself at 230 chips and UTG with a hand in
progress. I'd imagined that I'd have a little more breathing room. To my amazement, two players got in on the 9TK two-tone flop, one of them with a stack of about 12 BBs and the other about twice that. One had QJ, the other had TT. Sadly, TT covered QJ and the boat didn't come, so I prepared myself to be blinded out.

What followed really deserves hand histories, if for no other reason than to capture the reactions of the table, but the hand history email is slow in coming and I have yet to join the ranks of the PokerTracker masses. So I'll just paint the general picture:

BB (me): T4
button calls (?), SB folds, I push my last 30, button flips over K7
board: Q T T blank T

next hand:
SB (me) : KQs
UTG limps, button folds, I push for 330 more, BB calls,
UTG folds.
BB : A4o
flop : Q Q 4
me: quads?
turn : Q
me: quads.
BB: <expletive deleted>

Up to 1.2k now. Next hand:

button (me): QJs

Folded to me. I push. SB calls with TT, BB folds.
board: 9 8 8 8 J

All that aggression on the bubble does pay off. I was now at 2.6k and in second place.

The two shorter stacks gave their money to the big stack in a hurry, and we were now heads up. I was pushing almost every hand, and after getting called on the first one and minorly sucking out, stealing with relative impunity. Perhaps it was due to the tight image I had made for myself by not playing a single hand of the first 55. Or perhaps my opponent feared I had the mandate of heaven. He was frequently folding his SB to me heads up, and folding to my pushes when I had the button.

In one case he paused for 10 seconds and limped PF from the button, which smelled fishy since I'd pushed six or seven hands in a row, so I checked with K3 and got a flop of A K blank. I put a pot-sized feeler out there and was quickly slapped down, confirming my impression that he'd really wanted me to blast over the top of him PF. I folded figuring I could just resume stealing. The next hand he called my steal with Q3 with A8. I flopped two queens. This time saying "quads?" failed to invoke a queen and I had to settle for trips. He was crippled at this point and forced to go all in next hand where my AQ made two pair and put him to bed.

I guess there's more to this just make it to the bubble philosophy than I thought. Amazingly, during this entire run, not one person said the word "rigged" or used the phrase "only at Paradise." That is perhaps the strangest thing of all.

I promise less of this sort of wankery when I post in the future, but as I told one of my unfortunate opponents, this is pretty much the funniest thing I've seen in my short poker career.

boondockst
02-12-2005, 04:35 AM
I agree:

I had a great one the other day...note the chip stacks (same 2-table SNG)...

Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t150 (9 handed) converter (http://www.selachian.com/tools/bisonconverter/hhconverter.cgi)

CO (t4000)
Button (t2320)
Hero (t295)
BB (t1980)
UTG (t815)
UTG+1 (t1960)
MP1 (t4075)
MP2 (t1630)
MP3 (t2925)




Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t400 (2 handed) converter (http://www.selachian.com/tools/bisonconverter/hhconverter.cgi)

Hero (t12830)
Button (t7170)