My Top 3 Scores

As a little celebration of hitting my $100k badge on PocketFives, I thought I'd take a trip down memory lane and share with you guys my best scores online. All three tournaments were a fair while ago so I may have forgotten a few of the small details but in general I think I can remember the interesting points as, with good reason, all three were pretty big moments in my poker career. I'd love to hear some of your reactions in the comments below as I know some readers who aren't tournament grinders may think that these numbers are huge and others who have been around the block may laugh at me being proud of these modest scores. So without further ado, let's get to it.

1. $11,586 - 3rd Hotter 11 NLHE Turbo

So by far and away my biggest score ever was this Hotter 11 score just over one year ago. I actually chopped the tournament three-handed as the chip leader but soon after I 3-bet jammed over the BTNs min open with A5s and called off with TT and held to cripple me. The next hand I got in whatever random two cards I had and busted.

Obviously I ran absurdly well to make it through the almost 10,000 runner field and nothing summed the run up better than a hand on the final table bubble. As you do in turbos, I ran a little card dead with about 18 left and by the time we were down to 10 players, I only had about 6-7BBs. I picked up QJo in the small blind which is normally an any two shove so I was very happy to pick up a real hand. I was less happy though when the big blind snap called and tabled AQs. I bricked the flop and turn but binked the beautiful Jack on the river. That pot gave me a solid stack for the final table which I managed to ride all the way to the final three.

I remember sitting in my front room on the sofa next to my girlfriend, one-tabling the tournament as I'd become uber focused and nervous about the possibility of this big cash. Every time I played a pot I practically held my breath until the hand was over. When I finally busted after we made the deal I just sat back in shock and disbelief. My girlfriend, who'd been railing the whole time, asked me over and over if I was sure that I'd just won real money!

It was a truly great moment in my poker career and I really will have to go some to eclipse that feeling in the future, but I definitely hope I get the chance to.

2. $3,977 - 1st $11 NLHE Turbo 


Unlike the Hotter 11 which I one-tabled for hours and really did sweat, this score sort of came by surprise. Most Euro grinders will be very aware of the late night $11 $18k GTD turbo which comes near the end of most peoples schedules. It does tend to be a bit reg heavy, or at least heavier than the average turbo, but there's still more than enough recreational players to make it profitable.

On this particular night I remember having a pretty miserable evening's grind and my table count was pretty low by the time the tournament actually started. About an hour into the tournament I'd busted everything else and I didn't actually have a big stack so I took the laptop to bed and watched a bit of TV. If I'm brutally honest with myself I'd say I definitely didn't pay full attention to the tournament until we were down to about the final 100. 

I caught a wonderful heater and rode it all the way to heads up. Normally in a tournament like this I'd be begging for a deal but for some reason this time I just carried on playing without thinking about it. Maybe I was a bit tired or possibly I'd focused so much on not letting the money get to me that I'd completely forgotten about it. Afterwards I noticed that the difference between first and second was over $1k so I'm definitely glad I managed to take it down. A few grinders railed the final table and pointed out a few mistakes I made, including the final hand which I didn't particularly play well, but my opponent played worse. It involved me three-betting the flop with top pair weak kicker and the villain calling down with second pair. I was happy nonetheless.


3. $3,296 - 1st $5 NLHE 2R1A 

Now this tournament was memorable in two ways. Firstly, it was a big score in a non-turbo NLHE tournament, which traditionally aren't my forte, even though I do actually do a lot of work to improve in them. Secondly. I didn't actually want to play it!

The tournament started pretty late on in the schedule and by the end of the rebuy period, the average stack was somewhere near 200BBs, so I knew that going deep would require a LONG night. Thus I decided to go big or go home. I played near enough every hand, making wild three-bets and overbet jamming flops left and right, in an attempt to either build a huge stack or bust. Fortunately for me, it turned out to be the former. My stack rarely dipped under 100BBs for the whole tournament, even at the final table. I tightened up a bit towards the late stages but once I still tried to maintain the hyper-aggressive tactics that had got me that far.

The tournament eventually finished at around 5am, so even though usually I can't sleep after a big score, or even anything exciting poker-wise, I fell right to sleep and celebrated the next afternoon.

So there was a little fun post for you guys. I've been told that the "Top x" lists I've done in the past were pretty interesting and the reader numbers seem to back that up, and most of all I quite like writing them, so it's a win all round. It's been fun to take a trip down memory lane but I think now it's time to get back to the grind and start adding to the next "Top 3 Scores" list, and with SCOOP just about to begin, I'll have many chances to do just that. Good luck to all my fellow grinders for the next few weeks and I hope not too many bankrolls are destroyed. Speak to you all soon!

3rd in $33 Omania - Biggest PLO cash to date!

As you know, the Omanias are always on my daily schedule, be it the $5 PLO, the $8.80 NLO8 or the $33 PLO, and they are some of the softest tournaments all day. Along with the smaller rebuys, like the $3r PLO and the $5r PLO8, they seem to attract the largest amount of recreational players, mainly due to their large prizepools compared to the rest of the schedule, thus it's pretty simple to go deep, and even win these tournaments without ever having to play tricky. Simple ABC poker and playing a slightly more aggressive style than your average fish will show a healthy ROI.

I've had a fair bit of success in the Omanias, most notably shipping the morning $16.50 PLO8 twice and the NLO8 once as well as numerous other final tables but this one was by far the biggest. In fact, the top three prizes for this tournament were bigger than the first place pays out normally in any of the other Omanias I normally play. I would get into a discussion around this point that the Omania prize pools are slipping but that's something for another post. All I'll say here though is that unfortunately many at the moment are not hitting their guarantees during the week, especially the $5 PLO which seems to be missing it daily.

As for the actual tournament, like I discussed before, I didn't get up to anything fancy. Chipping up in the early and middle stages seemed to be a breeze as people seem very happy to call off with very little equity quite regularly. By the time we hit the bubble I'd managed to grind my stack up to a healthy 30k, approximately 25BBs. It's around here that the field seems to massively tighten up, with good reason sometimes as the min cash tends to be around $70. For the more experienced big stacks like myself, it's a great opportunity to put some pressure on the weaker players and the short stacks. I tend to take advantage of my HUD stats at this point because they can instantly tell me what my plan of action is against certain players. Against the loose passive fish which have lucked their way to this point by limping any four cards and smashing the flop, I can raise to isolate them into heads up pots and simply bet out small on all flops expect to get a fold a very large percentage of the time. Against tight players in the blind I can simply raise any unopened pot to steal the blinds and against better players I can tighten up and play solid poker.

By the time the bubble burst, the average stack was around 10BBs and we lost half the field within two orbits. Due to the fast structure and the general tight nature of PLO MTTs, the stacks never really consolidated and even up to the final two tables, average stacks remained short. I manage to keep a top 5-10 for the majority of the late stages by playing tight aggressive poker against the weaker players and managing to get AAxx in a fair few times preflop and holding. In fact, I manage to burst the final table bubble by doubling up through one of the bigger stacks while holding AAxx, and finishing him off the next hand with KKxx.

Nothing particularly special happened for the first part of the final table. The big stacks kept piling on the pressure and one by one the short stacks fell. By the time we got to four handed play I was the short stack myself but once again I managed to double holding AAxx and the chip leader finished the villain off to set up three handed play. Now here's where things got interesting.

The chip leader was a solid reg that unfortunately I didn't have many hands with but luckily a fellow grinder had, so he was able to give me some good reads that I felt I could use. I was second in chips by around 6-7BBs and the short stack, who was only around 5BBs behind me, was a weaker player who was probably a recreational poker player at best, and probably had very little experience playing PLO MTTs. The short stack immediately suggested a chop and as the money on the line was getting pretty big, I agreed to have a look at the numbers. The moderated posted the chip chop figures of $1.9k for the chip leader, $1.8k for me and $1.7k for the short stack. The other players quickly agreed but I hesitated. The original payout figures stood at $2.3k for the winner, $1.8k for 2nd and $1.3k for third. Although the deal would guarantee me a 2nd place payout, I believed I had a huge edge against the short stack, and between myself and the chip leader, we could apply a lot of pressure on him, grind him down and eventually bust him. At that point I could deal with the solid reg for a figure around $2.1k. It seemed a bit risky to pass up possibly $500 for a chance to win an extra $300, but I felt confident in my short handed PLO game and so believed it was right to turn down the deal. I still do.

Unfortunately for me, the best laid plans don't always turn out the way you want them to. A few hands later the weaker player opened from the SB, I 3-bet with KK87s and called his 4-bet jam. He flipped over AJ87ds which made me a small favourite but he managed to river a straight to take the pot and leave me crippled. The next hand I got it in with the reg with some decent equity but he held to send me home in 3rd for $1.3k.

I've gone over the deal discussion in my mind time and time again and even talked about it with some other MTT regulars who had more deal making experience than me, but the general consensus is that rejecting the deal was fine and that I shouldn't be disappointed that the risk didn't pay off. I'd probably do the same if I was put in the same position again and who knows, it may work out better for me that time. For now though, I'm pretty happy to get my biggest PLO cash to date, and first four-figure PLO cash, and look forward to possibly racking up a few more. My confidence at the game has shot up now that I'm winning at it again, and I genuinely feel like another big score could be just around the corner. Of course, should that happen, I'll let you folks know straight away! Until then though, I wish you all good luck at the tables and I'll speak to you all soon!

Deep TCOOP Run : $109 PLO8

So sometimes, when it comes to PLO8 MTTs, you can go months without any sort of interesting big buy-in tournament, and yet somehow I managed to play two in the space of three days! With the NLO8 offerings being a $82R and a $109 Hyper, this was the optimal O8 tournament of the series for me.

The day started perfectly. PokerStars set a brilliant satellite schedule with tons of $11 FOs and $5r's which were just beyond soft. I only managed to play 11 satellites in the afternoon as I was busy for most of the day but I still managed to ship four seats and truly free roll the event and start the week with a ton of T$.

In the actual event, much like the £220 PLO8, I managed to chip up a lot early on while the blinds were small and double my stack without having to play an all-in pot. The field was a lot more passive than expected from a mid-stake buy-in online tournament but sometimes that's what these xCOOPs are like and I was definitely thankful for that. I flopped well, ran good in all-in pots and and consistently managed to increase my stack over the first hour and a half.

The first problem I encountered was this hand. Like I said, I'd run really well in all-in pots beforehand and built up my stack nicely, but this guy took the biscuit, he was running like Usain Bolt. This pot was just before the bubble so it was a bit disheartening to watch but thankfully I had enough chips left to recover.

Because this pot was just before the bubble, it actually forced me to calm down, and stall a little bit unless the money, which thankfully meant I didn't punt off my stack which usually happens after spots like this. A min cash in this event would still be a decent chunk of money so taking a flip here would have been quite silly, especially with the pace at which people were busting and the average stack which was around 8BBs.

I made it into the money with around an average stack and got to work. I got a ton of steals through and used my above average knowledge of pre-flop equities to get into favorable situations and build my stack. In tournaments like these, fold equity is everything, so sometimes it's worth passing up on a near flip when being shoved into in order to preserve a large enough stack size to win blinds uncontested. It's a concept well documented in NLHE turbo tournaments but is definitely under utilized in PLO8.

I carried on chipping up and up until there were only nine players left. I was definitely getting nervous and a little excited about possibly final tabling a major tournament. Then came this hand.

It was definitely a spot to get it in, even if I were deeper than 6BBs. I was pretty happy with the flop and still quietly confident on the turn but the river was truly gut wrenching, needless to say, a few things on my desk took flight. I wouldn't call it a bad beat considering the equities pre-flop, near enough 50/50, so although it's a bit disappointing to miss out on the big money, I can't be too upset.

It's my biggest score in O8 and even though it's tough to be only 8 players away from $24k, I'm still very happy with a $2k score and TCOOP isn't even over yet, I still may have a shot at a big one! I'm planning to take a long weekend off poker so I don't get burnt out and thankfully this bink affords me some room to do that, however I'll be back on the grind next week, ready to make even bigger and better scores! I hope I'll have more posts like this for you guys in the future, but until next then I wish you all good luck at the tables and speak to you all soon!

P.S. Big shout outs to some of the O8 heroes having great TCOOP scores! Congrats to bokkie87, trelskig and Giffordonian who all had big five-figure scores in the past week! Good job lads!