Monday, March 25, 2013

London luck?

It's widely recognised how big a part luck plays in any poker tournament or in overall success in poker in the short term. What's less widely recognised is the different forms running good can take. Most people think exclusively in terms of their allins; whether their good hands held, they won their flips or they got the suckout when needed. But the less obvious forms of luck play at least as big a part.

(Photos courtesy of Mickey May)

In my recent deep run in the UKIPT London main event, I ran well on an obvious level, winning my flips when I needed to (until the last one). On the less obvious levels, not so much. Not only did I not get dealt my fair share of genuine premium hands, I didn't even get much by the way of playable hands. When I peeked at my cards, I found myself looking at j2o and 83o a lot more often than 98s or j8s. I was also unlucky on two crucial occasions when I did get the 98s.

The first one saw me 3 betting the button over a Chris Dowling raise. Chris was opening a very wide range of hands (as he does) and this seemed like a perfect spot for a light 3 bet. Some of the time Chris will have a very weak hand he has to fold pre and I pick up a decent pot. A lot of the time he will have something pretty marginal he may call with. When that happens, I have a disguised hand that flops well and position. If high cards come Chris is likely to believe it has hit me (and he would usually be right). If I do flop well, Chris is less likely to believe me and I stand to win a very sizeable pot. On a few rare occasions, Chris will have a hand strong enough to 4 bet (or may suspect I'm light). On those occasions I have an easy decision to fold. In the long run I will make a lot more chips from scenarios one and two than I lose in scenario three. Hence it's a good spot.

Unfortunately in this specific case I ran into Dave Docherty in the big blind. He cold 4 bet shoved aj and priced in I called and lost. There are actually three unlucky things about this from my point of view: first, that I run into a hand, second that it's David who has the hand (a lot of live players wouldn't dream of shoving aj there against an old guy playing as tight as I appeared to be but David is good enough and has played enough with me online to recognise that aj is ahead of my range), and third that having made the correct call on the basis of pot odds I didn't get there. I know it sounds strange to complain about bad luck when you get it in behind and don't suck out but it actually is bad luck (albeit not as much as when you get it in ahead and get outdrawn). I got it in with 41% pot equity but got 0% back. When you're running really really well you win those.

That hand, the first big move I made in the tournament (and while ABC will get you so far I think you need to be capable of at least the occasional move to really prosper in this game), was a bit of a turning point as I never again had the 50 big blind stack with the full range of tools it affords you. In fact I spent most of the rest of my tournament grinding 20 bigs or less.



The other big move (if you can even call it that: I consider it a totally standard shove) that went wrong was my exit. Folded to me on the button, I found 98s (again) and shoved. Some Twitter banter aside, anyone who knows anything about short stack poker knows this is a bog standard shove. With an M of 5 and the table 6 handed, that means I have 30 hands to find a spot or blind out (and only 12 hands before I drop too low to have any fold equity on shoves). While not exactly a premium hand 98s in decent shape against most hands that will call a shove. If I'm called by a smaller pair (which is what actually happened: the small blind had sixes), it's a flip and a chance to get right back into the game. Even if I run into,  say, ak I have a good fighting chance (40%). And if I'm unlucky enough to run into say aces, well at least I'm better off with a 22% shot than I would be if I had kings (18%).

While it's obviously disappointing to go that far but no further, I think it's crucial in this game not to be too results based and focus on performance and the long term. On that level I was very happy with my performance. I felt I gave myself the best possible chance given the cards and situations I was dealt. I picked my spots very well in general and was particularly proud of one hand in particular that was covered on the Stars blog (so I won't go into detail on it here) where I got creative and slowplayed kings thinking it was the best way to exploit over aggressive villains to get the treble up at a crucial moment late on day 1 when I found myself short stacked.

Another man who openly admitted on his blog recently to taking a much more short term view saying if he didn't get a result soon he would have to rethink his continued involvement in the game, Chris Dowling, went even further all the way to the final table. Even though we seem to disagree on almost everything, I have a lot of respect and fondness for Chris and would have loved to see him go all the way in this, his third UKIPT final table. After day 2 myself, Lappin and Mark Smyth were joined by Chris and some of his London based family for dinner in a Greek restaurant. Lappin was teasing us that it was like a throwback to a few years earlier when myself and Chris would have been seen as leading players on the Irish live scene. While I would baulk a little at Lappin's attempt to portray us as dinosaurs on the comeback trail, Chris and I have so much shared history at this point that I was genuinely gutted for him when I was starting my Sunday grind back in the hotel about an hour after chatting with him in the casino before the final table kicked off and heard he had busted. When you lose a big hand at the start of a final table there are inevitably questions and a few people wondered if it was wise for Chris to flip for so much at that point. However, Chris felt his opponent would show up with aq or other hands he dominated so he couldn't back off or take the lower variance route, and whatever else you think about Chris nobody can ever question his courage in those spots or his willingness to go with his read.

At the end of day 2 Jamie Burland asked me if I was interested in a swap as we had the same stacks at that point. I obviously snapped the offer as Jamie is both a top class player and a proven finisher. Unfortunately he ran no better than me on day 3 but he also cashed in the EPT. I have always maintained that consistency is a better judge of poker chops than even the most eye-catching individual result.

While I'm handling out the well dones, Tom "Jabracada" Hall and Neil "hefs" Raine deserve a lot of credit for an exciting finale to the UKIPT leader board race. Hefs looked to have put the matter out of reach when he finalled a turbo side, but after going deep but not deep enough inthe main, Jabracada gave himself one last shot jumping straight into the High Roller. He needed a decent final table to pip Hefs and did just that.

For my own part, back to back deep runs in UKIPT main events with a Super Poker side event final table sandwiched in between represents a much more pleasant type of streak than the one I went on last year that had me tearing my hair out and seriously contemplating retirement from live poker. I'm hoping to keep the good run going into the JP Masters, the Irish Open and Berlin.

Online has been going well too and on that front, massive well done to Jaymo for winning the Big 162 last week. Jaymo's the only guy I know whose hunger for the game rivals my own and his ability to keep his head through the downswings that are inevitable given his style and volume and just keep grinding makes him a very special player. The hardest thing in this game is to keep grinding through the bad spells. One of his housemates told me that after a particularly bad day at the lowpoint of one of his downswings all Jaymo had to say was that he couldn't wait to start grinding again the next day. That says it all. Once you have that kind of attitude discipline and work ethic luck ceases to be a factor in the long term.

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Gospel according to Jesse May




PokerStars (at the behest of the Legend that is Dave Curtis) kindly invited myself and my fellow Firm members David and Daragh to the launch of PokerStars Live at the Hippodrome in London. Daragh and I flew over in the afternoon. For once David was ahead of us, waiting in our hotel near Hyde Park. From there, we set off to find the Hippodrome armed only with a Googlemap I (the most organized member of the Firm) had printed off the night before. Daragh's a bit of a bossy boots at the best of times and seized on my initial confused oldster error sending us right rather than left when we walked out of the hotel to demand custody of the map. As we passed Wardour Street I weakly protested that I thought this was our turn off for the Hippodrome. Daragh was quite adamant that it wasn't using a tone that strongly suggested if I went on like that he'd pack me off to an old folks home soon, pointing to some distant blue building instead (always useful to throw colours in when you want to confuse the colour blind), so I didn't press the point. Thirty minutes later I rather wished I had as we were wandering around Holborn peering at street maps. I had David in one ear suggesting that we wrestle the map back from Daragh using all necessary force as he had proven himself to be unworthy of said map, and Daragh in the other suggesting that we press on in a direction that just couldn't possibly be correct (even David, who has the worse sense of direction I have ever seen, could see this). After negotiating the map back from Daragh and identifying where we had gone wrong, we set a new course.



We got there only 45 minutes late to find the ever patient Chihao Tsang (picture above courtesy of Mickey May) whom we had arranged to meet. I'm not sure how to describe Chihao, one of my favourite people ever, except to say that he might possibly be the greatest children book character ever, a character so instantly loveable that it's impossible to imagine anyone ever taking a dislike to him. As ever, he took the annoyance of waiting for three stupid lost Paddies in London (one of whom was texting him every 5 minutes to say we were only 5 minutes away) without any, well, show of annoyance. On to the steak house where we waited for our food to the accompaniment of the classic Lappin rant that is "How I hate going to steakhouses with Doke". The basis of this uncatchy little ditty is since I like my steak well done and he likes it blue (which for those of you not in the know means they take it out of the freezer, warm it on the radiator for a minute or two, wave it at the oven and then serve it on a warm plate) which means he has to wait a while for his lump of raw cow.

We were still in plenty of time to be too early for the Stars shindig in the rather swanky Hippodrome which Fergal Nealon told us was a Peter Stringfellow joint back in the day. Only Kevin McPhee and a few other literal souls had got there before us, but before we knew what was what they were pouring free champange down us, a very drunken Jamie Burland was taking me to task over my fashion sense and colour blindness, and Daragh and I found ourselves sitting down at the same table as Liv Boeree, Surindar Sunar, Nick Wealthall (who once earned the lifelong hatred of Mrs Doke comparing me to a badger on national TV), Barney Boatman and James Akenhead. While most of others got into the freeroll spirit of things with all sorts of fancy plays like 6x opens and peeling for 25% of your stack with ten high, the two Daras just sat there trying to play optimal poker. Our excuse is when you're a Stars pro like Liv or a November Niner like James, the chance of winning an EPT seat for nothing is probably no big thang, but for us, well, would be nice. Like most freerolls, this one was a total crapshoot, only even more so. The highlight was when one of the genuine heroes of the game Mickey "mement_mori" Petersen was moved to my left and we started to have a pleasant chat (when I turned full time all those years ago, Mickey was already a reg is the $50 plus Ipoker sit n gos that were my staple), which was cut short when I standard shoved j9s from the small blind, he snap standard called with A6o, and I got there to knock him out. I knocked Liv out a little while later in a slightly less standard spot. After I opened ATs utg, she announced her decision to play "non optimal poker" and peeled for 25% of her stack. I checked to let her hang herself on the ace high flop. To be fair, she had flopped a flush draw but didn't get there. So, two Stars pros doked out of it in quick succession.

Daragh was coolered early, and before you could say "More free booze please" I found myself on a final table with Neil Channing, Barney, Simon Trumper, Jeff Kimber (who apart from Neil seemed to be the only person at the table with a clue as to who I was) and David Vamplew. I had a bit of a stack too, or at least I was comfortably above average with 8 big blinds. At this stage the free booze was definitely starting to kick in so my recollection of my exit is a little hazy. What I do remember is that Jeff Kimber made a correct shove on the button with a king and I correctly called in the small blind with an ace, but was not victorious despite making 2 pair.

Daragh and David had roped Chihao into a game of open faced Chinese. We have been playing a bit of OFC recently and talking strategy among ourselves but I still did wonder aloud about the wisdom of playing Open Faced Chinese with an actual Chinese person. In an apparent attempt to counter balance this, the lads also roped in Jesse May, on grounds of strong suspicion he would be a fish (actually he played it very well, and only lost because he ran bad).

Myself and David were both playing the main event the next day so as soon as I bust the freeroll we made our excuses and left. Chihao, legend that he is, apparently stumbled in his drunken state straight to his office, rode the lift to the fifth floor, pulled two benches together, and grabbed a couple of hours kip before being awoken by colleagues and working a half day and then returning to the Vic to play day one. The stuff of legends (and possible future interventions).

The next day Jesse dropped round to my table to ask how I was getting on. I jokingly asked him if he was looking for a game of OFC. He replied that he suspected I might deliberately bust just for the chance to play him in OFC. Then he coined a possible new term for the Firm, when he said "Or just do what you did yesterday and dispatch Doke's Disciples to play me".

On second thoughts, that particular name might be a tough sell to the other members of the Firm.

Monday, March 11, 2013

Super Dooper Poker event

I played the Super Poker event (or the Super Dooper event as me and Chris Dowling both tried to rename it, at least on Twitter) in Citywest. The tournament was a very different animal from last year's inaugural running with a much better structure. I got off to a good start (flopping quads against Nicky Power kinda helps) and was feeling very positive fresh off my deep run at UKIPT Cork and a good week at the online tables. I got up as high as 75k before playing my first hand of interest.  Eventual final tableist Sammy O'Brien opened in early position and I found tens on the button. Lappin often makes the point that most of the trickiest and most interesting spots in tourney poker occur when you have nines or tens facing a raise and the stacks are relatively deep, as they were in this case. While Sammy is definitely on the looser side of the Rock Paper Maniac spectrum and tens figures to be well ahead of his opening range, it doesn't figure to be in good shape against his 4 betting range. So I decided to flat his open rather than 3 bet and run the risk of facing a very tricky decision if he did 4 bet. Another factor in my decision is the big blind had a reshoving stack of about 20 big blinds. If he did squeeze and Sammy went away I was a lot happier calling off 20 big blinds against his range than I would be calling off 70 against Sammy. The big blind dwelt a little while apparently considering the squeeze before eventually flatted too.  

I thought the 9 high flop looked pretty good for my hand until the action went shove reshove. While I would have happily called the big blind (who could just be executing a stop and go with any pair or air on a flop which doesn't look like it should have hit me or Sammy), getting the loot in against Sammy with the bare overpair didn't seem sensible. While I was aware he could be overplaying something worse I didn't feel he would show up with pocket eights or a random nine often enough for the call to be profitable. Even if I felt it was close (which I didn't) I'd still fold a lot in a decent structure with a relatively soft field rather than make a high variance call for all my chips. After I folded I got to see the two hands. I didn't expect to be ahead of both, but was somewhat surprised to see I was ahead of Sammy's ace nine but behind the big blind jacks. There's no point in being too results based in these situations though: I was still happy with the fold (and happier again when another nine popped out on the river meaning had I made the call Sammy would have got there against me). My next big hand was also against Sammy. He opened again in early to mid position, and I 3 bet kings from the small blind. I deliberately sized my 3 bet a lot bigger than normal as Sammy doesn't seem to fold very much to 3 bets, meaning I was able to get a quarter of my stack in pre. This means the rest of the chips were going in on almost any flop without an ace on it. The jt7 flop isn't exactly the best of flops for kings, but not the worst either, meaning I pretty much have to be prepared to follow through and get the rest in against an opponent who had already shown willing to put a lot of chips in with one pair. So I bet called my overpair only to find to my dismay that Sammy had flopped a set of sevens. No miracle suckout and i was on my way towards the exit. At least my chips went to a good home. Sammy is a gentleman who does very well on the Dublin circuit and is very popular.

I did manage to final table the side event, busting in 7th. Coupled with my cash in UKIPT Cork that means I  cashed in two of my last four live tourneys, a pleasant turn around of my form in the second half of last year.



In between I did some commentary for the livestream alongside fellow Firm member Nick Newport, Lithuanian online beast Vytauskas (who plays as begalybe on Irish Eyes) and Feargal Nealon. Myself and Nick commentated on the final table which featured two friends of mine, Jamie Browne (who finished 4th) and Daryl McAleenan (who was second). Well done to both lads. Also a big well done to Nick who was in the commentary box for most of the weekend and took to it like a duck to water. Big Iain recorded the last segment and will be making it available online soon.



After the tourney was finished myself and Nick went to the bar for a pint or two with Daryl. We were joined by one of my favourite characters on the Irish scene Bob Tait. A proud Scot famous for turning up at tourneys in a kilt, Bob is always a delight to run into. He introduced us to a lovely couple from Donegal, Laura and Martin Coyle. Laura has some memory as she reminded me of a big hand we played in Killarney three years ago when I made aces full versus her quad kings. I managed to find the fold on the river. God be with the days I was able to fold full houses: these days I struggle to fold a pair :)



One of the delights of live poker is the social aspect and meeting so many great people you wouldn't otherwise meet. While we were in Citywest we filmed some stuff for Irish Eyes and on how to get staked by The Firm so look for that soon on the Irish Eyes site.



Finally, a free giveaway. The next big event in Citywest I'm looking forward to is the Legends Cup. Irish Eyes  Ideal is currently running satellites to the event. There are $5 sats every say from Monday to Saturdays at 8 pm to a $32+ reg qualifier every Sunday at 8 pm for day 1 seats in the Legends. I'm giving away ten entries to a $5 satellite to the first ten people who have signed up to Irish Eyes using my code "Doke" (if you haven't signed up already you can do so) who send me a tweet (I am daraokearney on Twitter) or Facebook or here (on this blog) with their Irish Eyes username and the day they want to play. The first ten people to do so will be automatically registered.

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Corker

I said to Mick McCloskey recently that it must be tough for players who just play live tourneys to deal with variance and downswings. Online players routinely deal with downswings that extend into the thousands of games. That's fine online if you are playing 20000 games a year but live that could be a lifetime. Online players who routinely brick 20 or 30 tourneys in a night think nothing of it, but when you do that live you have to start dealing with people telling you you're not a live player. Memories are getting shorter and even though I usually point to a pretty consistent record over my career and the fact that I'm pretty high up this list for someone who only started playing 5 years ago I generally get the feeling I'm appealing to deaf ears. So it was nice to make my first day 3 in a while at UKIPT Cork.


I had a tough table draw on day one that featured Big Mick G, Nelius Foley and Nick "mi_turtle" Rainey. The player who posed me the most problems though was a very unorthodox Danish maniac. I don't know his name so I mentally called him the Daniac. No fold button and a man whose poker lexicon had nothing after B for barrel and bluff, he unfortunately had it pretty much every time I called him down. One such stationing episode almost cost me my tourney life before the second break. After I 3 bet kings from the blinds and he peeled, he called my cbet on a akx board with 2 diamonds. After the worst card in the deck hit the turn (queen of diamonds) I elected to go into check call mode to allow him to barrel his air hands and value bet worse. I called his river bet leaving me with just 5 big blinds behind (he again had it: jto with no diamond for the turned gutter). I considered shoving the river as there are definitely worse hands he calls with (smaller sets and 2 pair) but elected to take the more cautious route.

Another player asked me about a hand in the side event where he had a similar river spot. When I asked him why he shoved even though he thought there was an excellent chance his set was no good (there were four cards to a straight on board) he said that he felt his hand was too strong to fold and he saw no point in just calling and leaving himself with less than ten big blinds. I hold the polar opposite opinion: in my view a thousand in chips is a lot more valuable when it's the difference between 1k and 0 rather than the difference between 41k and 40k.

It's a bit of an in joke in the Firm that nobody plays 5 big blinds better. I think it's important to never give up and even with 5 bigs I don't subscribe to the intellectually lazy "flick it in at the first opportunity" theory. I actually managed to spin my 1k back up to starting stack of 15k in a couple of orbits, getting it in ahead each time and holding. To emphasise how quick things can turn around in tourney poker, my third double up was also the Daniac's exit hand.

Having dropped as low as 1k I was pretty happy to be bagging up 45k, an above average stack, at the end of the day.

Day 2 was an up and down day. I got up to 100k early in the day and dropped as low as 30k after letting Noel Magner get there and paying him off. Towards the end of the day I was moved beside Tom the Bomb Finneran. Tom's a good mate and a great player and had amassed a stack terrorising the table after coming back short.

One of the features of the interaction between live poker players and the social media is not only do interested railers back home have the opportunity to access up to date information, but the players can also interact with each other and the rail via Twitter and Facebook. I am a pretty social animal so I get a kick out of this added dimension, and it never fails to amaze me how many people you can reach through the social media. After Tom the Bomb had tweeted my arrival at the table, I got a tweet from his wife Mrs Bomb asking me to go easy on him! I could have done with Mrs Doke tweeting Tom instead as he was running the table over at the time.



I managed to navigate my way through to end the day with about 90k, an advance on where I started but one of the shortest coming back. It should also be noted I got lucky late in the day after the bubble had burst. The impressive Pascal Tongi had arrived at the table with chips and was beasting it. In the circumstances nines seemed like a perfectly reasonable hand to reshove over his early position raise and even when he snapped I was still reasonably confident my nines were good or at least racing. They weren't. He had tens but I got there.

Having run well to make day 3, it ended there.  I was drawn on the same table as the two remaining Stars pros Liv Boeree and Dale Phillip. Early on I called Dale's shove with aj. He said Oops as he turned over his hand, a worse ace, but the board double paired on the river to make our kickers redundant and we chopped. In retrospect that was a big moment as a hold would have allowed me to escape the sub 20 big blind zone. Instead I remaining handcuffed in that zone til my exit. I did manage to win a race against Cahal Heapes but by then I had blinded down to the point that even the double up left me with less than 20 bigs. Shortly after, it was folded to Andy Grimasson in the small blind. Andy had shoved every time this had happened when I was short and I never found a hand I could even consider calling with. I now had too much for him to just open shove a wide range to me. Instead he went for a normal raise , which I interpreted as one of two things. He either had a marginal hand he wasn't happy to get the lot in with, or he had a monster and was inducing me to shove. I looked down at kqo and shoved. When he snap called I knew he had been inducing. I'm still in decent shape against most of his range (even if he has jacks its a flip) but unfortunately he had one of the few hands I really didn't want to see, aq. He held and I busted in 27th. No regrets though: I was happy with my play overall and it was good to go somewhat deep in a big Irish tourney for the first time in a while.

It was a pretty good festival for the Firm in general. Jason took down the High Roller as he does. David final tabled the 300 side event, Daragh final tabled the Deepstack turbo, and Nick final tabled the main event. In a recent blog Nick freely admitted he had had a bad year of it before he joined us. Since joining us, he has been crushing online and was happy with his deep live run here. It's great to see him happy and enjoying his poker again.


Finally, a big well done to Tom the Bomb who all the way and kept the title in Ireland.

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