PokerStars Dream Job Canada

PokerStars is running a $100+9 buy-in tourney on Nov29 @ 7PM EST where the winner is awarded a$100k contract with PokerStars. The breakdown of the contract is $5k/month for 12 months with $40k to be used for live tournement entries via the site. It also appears that places 2-11 will win $2.5k.

They are running various qualifiers to that tourney, some for cash buy-ins ($1+.10, $10+1) and some with player point buy-ins. I decided to play in one of the $10+1 qualifiers last night after exercising. PS offers late registration (15 minutes) to their tournaments. I don't normally register for a tournament late, because I feel that I will be at a slight disadvantage. Wasn't the case last night. The first half dozen hands were good to premium quality and I doubled my stack quickly. Now with a stack, and a fairly passive table, I would raise with a wide range of hands, and more often than not win PF or take it down with a bet on the turn(*). I was rolling quite smoothly until one player came from another table and figured out what I was doing as started to play back at me. Still, I was able to build up a top-10 stack and stay there as the number of people dropped from 106 to about 40ish.

(* side note) Checking the flop and betting the turn is turning out to be one of the best strategies that I have developed in my PLO8 game that's turning out to be quite profitable in NLHE as well. The concept is that a fish will call light on the flop and hope to catch good on the turn. And since many players will bluff at the flop and shut down on the turn, cause a bluff bet there will consume too much of their stack, the fish's call allows them to see the next two cards for that one call. It's a very advanced play that they make quite accidentally. By going PF bet, check flop, and betting the turn, I've done a couple things: 1) I've played it like I'm slow playing a monster, 2) I've been able to see my opponent's reaction to that flop twice, if in position, and once if out of position. Remember, I'm playing a fish who, even in position, isn't likely to bet at the PF raiser. So, my delayed continuation bet takes down many more pots than my flop continuation bet ever would. Of course, the occasional opponent catches up on the turn, or then calls me down with flopped middle pair, but I'm more than compensated by the hands that have been folded to me there when I've had nothing. Ok, back to the original discussion...

Things got tricky with about 40 players left. For one, the player who was playing back at me has accumulated a few more chips than me, so I'm putting myself at risk if I try to make plays PF, when he's still left to act behind me (two to my left at a 9 person table). Secondly, the blinds were getting high relative the the stack sizes. I may have been top-10, but my M was less than 20 (M=stack/(BB+SB+antes), M>20 means any PF approach is acceptable, less than that and certain plays, like set mining don't give the right ROI if you flop it and stack your opponent). Beyond just constraining my PF plays, my M issues mean that others with bottom tier stacks have worse M problems. That usually means that have only 1 PF play: all-in. So I had to tighten up and navigate those waters carefully.

Didn't work out too well initially. I lost 2 all-ins to smaller stacks to find myself with an M of 8 and forced to go all-in PF or fold. That's when I started to get lucky. I push from middle position with Td5d and get called by QQ. I flop a 5 and turn a T to win with 2 pair. 2 hands later, ironically to complete my knock out of the same QQ opponent, I move all-in PF with 33, and he called with AT. I flop a set and turn quads to finish him off. I'm now back in the top-10 and there are only 30 people left.

Shortly after, I finally get moved to a new table (27 left), and basically tread water the rest of the way to the payout bubble. Top 9 get entry to the $109 tourney, 10-16 get their entry fee refunded and 17th gets the $2 left over. I'm fortunate that there are 2 bigger stacks sitting out, so I try to steal their blinds when possible. By doing this once per round, I'm able to keep the same stack size. Occasionally I get a caller, and occasionally I get a hand and would win some more chips. But my plan was to stay away from big pots with the hugest stack, who happened to be 1 to my left, and take many small ones.

Hand-by-hand play went into effect from 20 players to 16, took about a half hour for a dozen hands, but was happy to get to 16th, since now I've broken even for the day. At 16, we're down to 2 tables, and most of the big chips stacks are sitting at my table. Sometimes this is a bad thing, cause if you get some greedy big stack raising every hand, then you can't just keep mucking or you'll get blinded out, but you have to put your tourney at risk any hand you decide to play. But I had smart table mates. We only had 1 short stack, so it was clear that everone's focus was to knock him out. When that was done, we effectively folded to the BB every time. This put the pressure on all the short stacks on the other table. We all stayed at roughly the same level, except for the one player, who was once chip leader but was sitting out. His blind got stolen by anyone who min raised PF.

After 40 minutes of that, I won my entry to the main tournament. Now I need to convince my wife to left me play starting at 7PM, which is usually when I'm giving my kids their baths and am putting them down to sleep.