HPT Main Event

This weekend my brother and I drove up to Walker, MN to play in the Heartland Poker Tour Main event. The drive was really sweet. We drove through the woodlands of Northern Minnesota. Our hotel was located right on Leech Lake. It sure is purdy in those parts.

First we tried a couple of qualifiers. I bubbled my first qualifier and decided not to play anymore. Instead, I bought directly into the main event for $1k. Before the tourney started, I finally had the privelage of meeting Dan "kalangis612" Goonin. It was awesome finally meeting him. He seems like a really chill guy and I hope that he'll be joining me in Vegas.

All players started with 15,000 chips blinds at 100/100. The levels were only 30 minutes long. The structure was excellent until the 1000/2000 level. They didn't have 25 chip denominations, so the antes started at 100 during 300/600 level. That made play pretty sloppy afterwards. Anyways, I chipped up early taking advantage of a super weak/tight starting table. After the 1st break I won a huge pot off of a loose call station with KK on a 10 high board (I wouldn't put it past him to have q10, k10, etc). That put me at 35k. A few hands later, I lost 20k back to the same player when we got them in on an 8 high board. He had a8, I had 99. He spikes the ace on the turn for the 40k pot. I bounced back with a few good hands and aggressive play. I knocked out a couple of short stacks with JJ and QQ and built my stack up to 50k.

At this point, about 80 players remained and the average was around 35k. The blinds were 2000/4000, so my M was fairly low. I picked up A7 in late position and shoved. The player directly to my left called his 33k stack with QQ and I lost the pot. Down to 17k in the BB, I called a late position shove of 20k with 64 suited. There was already 11k in the pot before her shove, so the 64 was an easy call (had to take the gamble, no matter how ugly it looks). Villain turned over k10 and i hit my 4 to win the pot. About one orbit later, I picked up Jacks. A player UTG shoved and I reshipped. The small blind called. Sb turned over 99's and UTG turned over AJ. My jacks held and I nearly tripled up.

With about 50 players left I went completely card dead. The structure was awful, so it was either push or fold, which really hurt my standard mtt style. I prefer making small raises to take down blinds rather than shoving all in and playing big pots. I chipped down to about 65k with about 40 players to go. Here, I went into reship mode. I reshipped a late position raise a couple times, once with 55s and another with AQ. I chipped up to about 80k when we finally made the money with 30 players remaining. At this point, the blinds had been raised to 2500/5000 with a 500 chip ante. I picked up KQ UTG+1 at a 9 handed table and shoved all in. It was folded around to the big blind who called with 10s. I lost the flip and sent 35k his way. I stole a few more blinds and chipped back up to a little over 50k. Then, I picked up KK UTG+1 and shoved. The bb (guy with 10's from earlier) called with AJ. Flop brought an ace, good game me. I was just a few tables short of getting my ugly mug on tv.

This tournament made me realize how much I hate live poker. I played really well for over 8 hours. The end result: a cash for $1,088. The buy in for the tournament was $1100. I lost $12 on the day. So to conclude my tournament recap, I'm going to just rant for a little about live poker tournaments.

-The players are so ridiculously bad, yet they ridicule me for my aggressive style, especially when I get caught. Fuck people, I'm not gonna sit around like ur nitty asses letting the blinds and antes chew me up waiting for aces or kings.

- The structures suck. They think that a good structure means more starting chips. Not the case people. On the money bubble, I had 65k chips, which was the average stack. This was an M of approximately 4. The majority of the field had an M under 4. Just ridiculous. Would it kill you to have 25 chip antes and a 150/300, 600/1200, and 800/1600 level?!

- Dealers suck. Some of the dealers for this tournament were blackjack dealers and slots attendents who had a 3 day crash course in dealing poker the week before the tournament. I could tell. Some of them were very good, but at least half the dealers I had seemed lost. They miscounted antes, couldn't seem to figure out how much was in a person's chipstack, and they frequently forgot to give players change from higher denomination chips. On top of that, they took a really long time to deal the cards in general. And then, at the end of the tournament, the last thing that was said to me wasn't "god damn tcb, had it not been for that ugly final hand you probably woulda shipped this tourney. Congrats, you are the man." Instead, it was "if you'd like to leave a tip for the dealers, which we encourage, you can leave it in this tip box." I grudgingly left the dealers $8, which is a lot more than they deserved.

- A lot of players think they need to hollywood it up. They've seen it on tv and they wanna act just like those guys. These people look at their cards, put the card marker down, look at them again, fold their hands against their chin, look at the cards again, then fold. From under the gun! I swear we probably played an average of 15 hands an hour...

- Busting out of a live tournament is heartbreaking compared to an online one. People, I have probably had several hundred mini cashes in big tournaments because of bad beats. But after those beats, I realized that I could just close my computer and start again the next day, or better yet, fire up another tourney while lying on my couch in my 'draws watching South Park. Live play is different. I drove 5 hours north, stayed an entire weekend, played 8 hours, only to bust on a sick beat just short of a televised final table, against a SUPER weak field. Then, after that beat, I had to hop in my car and drive another 5 hours back home in the rain.

In conclusion, I am glad I'm not a live tourney pro. I much prefer playing online. I will still take the occasional live shot. I'm going to vegas in late june to play the Venetian series events and possibly some smaller buy in WSOP events. After that, I plan to play some more close HPT events and the Fall Poker Classic at Canterbury.