Stars $10 Rebuy--A Super-Suckout Trip Report (LONG...really!)

[DougBrennan]

Hi All

The God of Cards smiled at me on Friday night, and I found myself the last player standing in the Stars $10 Rebuy tourney, out of 842 entrants. This is by a factor of 4 the largest field I have beaten, and I was startled at how lucky I was. It is a "given" that to beat a field that large you will have to get lucky at some point, but even so, I pushed the boundries. Here are a few highlights (and lowlights) with some of my thinking, what I can remember of it.
I'll try to keep it as brief as possible, but feel free to skip the whole thing if tourney recaps bore you.

$10 Pokerstars re-buy 1st hour anytime at/under T1500.

My normal approach is to rebuy at once, thus starting with T3000. I then try to play tight but aggressive, as big hands get paid off, and it's tough to bluff anybody out.

HAND 12

Blinds 10/20 I have T2920 and AKs in the SB. First hand I played. I raised two limpers to 140 got one caller and a flop of 3 10 5 rainbow. I bet 340 to buy the pot, and got called. Yuck. Turn is a K, I go all in, opponent folds.
Win a 1120 pot.

HAND 17

15/30 I have 3560, get AK in UTG+1. UTG calls, I raise to 120, 2 MPs and UTG call. Flop 5d 6c Jd. UTG and I check, MP bets 120, we all call. Turn Qs, all check. River As, both MPs go all-in, and I call. Awful on my part I know, and I lose to a straight. I drop to T540, and rebuy.

I now go quite dry, and by hand 36 I'm down to T1455, and rebuy again. I'm beginning to feel like I'm not playing very well, and that it's not my night, card-wise. For the rest of the hour I stay out of trouble, win a few pots uncontested, and finish out the session with T3730. Add-on T2000, and start the second hour with T5730.

HAND 74

75/150 T5280 AsJh in MP. UTG raises to 450, I call. Flop 5h 8c 6c, UTG bets 450. This seems weak, so I raise 1200, UTG folds, I collect T2325.

HAND 93

100/200 T6105 Kc 9h in MP. Fold to me, I try a steal with a raise to 800, and, Ta Da!, get called twice. So of course on the flop of 5d 5s 10s I bet 1600. I mean, wouldn't you? I did believe that the flop didn't help anybody, but still, that's pretty risky. But Dame Fortune liked my style and they both folded. This was a recurring theme for me, almost all my ill-conceived bluffs and mis-timed steals worked out.

At this point I start to get some actual hands, pocket Kings and Jacks and two big Aces in hand 113.

HAND 115

200/400 a25 T12455 I get AA for the second time in three hands. MP raises to 1600, I re-raise to 2800, MP calls all-in, and shows AK. I'm good and collect T6045.

HAND 118

200/400 a25 T15440. I must have been feeling my oats, because I now make a very poor play, and get away with it. I have Ac 8c in cutoff, and raise to 1200 to steal. The SB raises to 4000, and I call!!! I have no rationale for this play or for what followed. Flop is 4d Qc 7d. SB bets 3200, and I go all-in. A couple of things about this play suck. The SB had played a LOT of pots and did not impress me as being particularly good. Also, he already had about 50% of his chips in the pot, so he was probably feeling pot-committed. As I clicked the raise button I yelled at myself, "That's an AWFUL play you idiot."
After a long time, SB folded. Wow. I collect T15025 and move to T23015 total.

Now I go up and down a little until this extravaganza.

HAND 191

1000/2000 a100 T23760. I have J 10 and try a steal raise to 6000, two seats to my left pushes all-in for 16609. I somehow decide I like the pot odds, plus the tourney seems to have stalled out for me, and I called. Kids, don't try this at home. I lost to an A K as neither of us improved and deservedly fell to T7051.

HAND 196

1000/2000 a100. T4651 and I'm in real trouble with these blinds. I pick up 7h6h, decide this is my best chance to pick up any chips, and call an all-in from an also short-stacked EP. He shows 44, but I catch a 6 on the turn, and now I'm rolling in chips, T12002. 6xBB whoo hoo!

HAND 204

1000/2000 a1000 T11302. I'm in the BB with 88, a similarly-stacked UTG goes all-in, I call and my pair holds up against his AJ. I collect T24304, and though I didn't know it, I was pretty much off to the races at this point.

I now get a run of decent starters and win enough blinds and small pots unoppossed to get up to to T75504 by hand 280. Down a little, and then...

HAND 280

4000/8000 a400 UTG I get 88 and go all-in. Honest, all I was after were the blinds. But I get called by a stack 3 times my size, who shows AK. But Lady Luck and I were dancin' the tango, and I ended up with a boat, though the pair was good enough. Collect T149784.

We are now well into the money, down to the last 3 tables, and here it is. If you thought I'd been lucky beyond reason up to this point, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

HAND 313

6000/12000 a600 T152365. I have QJo and open-raise to 36000 in MP. A stack of 46408 pushes, and I call, I believe correctly in this case. I'm actually pretty happy when he shows 44, as I'm only a small dog here. I am elated to see 2 Queens on the flop, but then I see nestled between the ladies a lone 4. Just as I am digesting the fact that my opponent has a boat, THE CASE QUEEN COMES ON THE TURN. That's right, 4 Queens beats the flopped boat.

HAND 318

6000/12000 a600 T 219173 and still hyperventilating, but at a new table. I get 55 in the BB, all fold to the SB who goes all-in for 204300, and I call. I suspect this to be a bad play, maybe awful, but I was still sucking wind from the Ladies. My pair holds up over A8o, and now I have T427673 and am solidly in first place, with about 15 left.

Hang in there folks, we're almost done.

My print out of the hands is a little garbled at this point, so some numbers may be approximate.

HAND 360
15000/30000 a1500. I'm now at T954487. We are on the bubble for the final table, and I have 10 10 in MP. I open-raise all-in, fully expecting to take the blinds. I get called all-in for T454956, and he shows Jacks. Not to worry tonight folks, The flop has 2 tens in it, and I have my second quads in the last half-hour, moving to T1435353.

This has gone on long enough, so I'll just summarize from here. At this point I had a solid lead, and I managed to play it pretty well, stealing here and there, but only geting involved in a hand when I felt strongly that I had the edge, and after about 75 hands we were down to heads up, and I had a 2:1 chip advantage.

Heads up was a strong, interesting match. Interesting to play, but not much to report. We were both pretty aggressive, most hands raised pre-flop, but not many showdowns. After about 60 or so hands my opponent took a slight lead, but shortly thereafter I had pocket Kings to his nines, and I doubled up, giving me the opportunity to take a couple of chances, and on hand 87 of the heads-up match I hit a straight on the river to win it all.

Six and-a-half hours total, 40 minutes of heads-up, and more luck than I expect to see in a long, long time. Also more fun and more adrenaline than I'm used to, but hey.

I don't really know if this is the normal amount of luck needed to win one of these tournaments, but I sure don't see how anyone could get much luckier. Suckouts, pocket pairs that hold up, and unchallenged bluffs. It took all of that to get me to the finish wire.

If you made it this far, congratulations, I guess. Hand analysis is not really the focus of this post, but any comments you care to make would be gladly received.

Thanks for listening
Doug

[sabre170]

Thanks for the post. That was quite a rush you had!
Good job not blowing it heads up.

Sabre170

[Che]

Doug-

Congratulations on a big win, but I'm obviously a better player than you since I only had to hit quads once when I won the Stars 10+1 rebuy! [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[ QUOTE ]
I don't really know if this is the normal amount of luck needed to win one of these tournaments

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, I don't know if it's needed or not, but above-average luck has always been a factor in my final table appearances. In fact, your experience has all the usual elements (suckout or two plus opponents constantly folding when you bluff and always calling when you have them buried) except one: unusually high proportion of big hands.

For example, I got 1.5x the expected number of big pairs in my win. What's more, my opponents challenged me allin on over 80% of my big pairs and I only lost one showdown (to a tiny, tiny stack).

You didn't seem to get as many big starting hands, so maybe I'm not better than you after all. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

Seriously, congratulations on a big win. Well done.

Later,
Che

[wayabvpar]

Congrats! That $10 rebuy tournament seems to really work for you- IIRC, you were at the final table when I ended up winning it. Are you making the money on a consistent basis?

[DougBrennan]

I have to confess to not making the money as often as I think a decent player should, and in fact coming into this tourney I was beginning to question my self-rating of "decent."

I don't know if this result changes anything, but damn was it fun! I was the chip leader by a substantial amount for all but about 2 minutes of the last hour and-a-half, people were folding to my open-raises and not challenging my blinds, it sure felt like I knew what I was doing. But then, CEOs probably think they're actually funny when underlings laugh at their pathetic jokes.