Guarantee Donkaments
I guess it was about time i ran well in one of these? Ive only ever put in a deep run in one of these tournaments once before, and that was a long while ago in a 6max tournament. After spending ages to get down to the final 15, AA < KK on the river busted me out in 15th place for a nice, albeit rather small, $75 cash. Not yesterday though!
I entered the $2.20 $1000 guarantee on pokerstars which ended up received a 4065-man field. The pay structure paid to the top 495, and it was a sloooooow increase from there if you wanted anything meaningful. By the time i'd cashed i had a decent looking stack and started setting modest targets - make top 200, top 180, top 150.. etc. Before I knew it i was very deep in and sitting on a very big stack!
A critical hand came when I doubled with aces (lol); i basically opened it from the BB to 56,000 and got two callers. I bet and got it in on a 7c 3c 2s board to see my opponent flip Kc 8c for a horrible sweat. The blank ace turn queen river were safe, though, and my stack soared up to around 940,000, putting me 4th of 21 or so.
A bit later down the line I had the hand that I'm most proud of; a tough laydown that couldve cost me my tournament if i'd decided to go the other way:
PokerStars Game #37067450125: Tournament #223749175, $2.00+$0.20 USD Hold'em No Limit - Level XXXIV (10000/20000) - 2009/12/23 3:05:33 WET [2009/12/22 22:05:33 ET]
Table '223749175 63' 9-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: Nalteo (369852 in chips)
Seat 3: magnumtwo (646714 in chips)
Seat 4: yates04 (1052135 in chips)
Seat 5: vovvik (775826 in chips)
Seat 6: stefan198219 (732733 in chips)
Seat 8: roodevic (360806 in chips)
Seat 9: Alex Burlton (926306 in chips)
Nalteo: posts the ante 2500
magnumtwo: posts the ante 2500
yates04: posts the ante 2500
vovvik: posts the ante 2500
stefan198219: posts the ante 2500
roodevic: posts the ante 2500
Alex Burlton: posts the ante 2500
magnumtwo: posts small blind 10000
yates04: posts big blind 20000
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Alex Burlton [Qc Qs]
vovvik: folds
stefan198219: folds
roodevic: folds
Alex Burlton: raises 35000 to 55000
Nalteo: raises 312352 to 367352 and is all-in
magnumtwo: raises 276862 to 644214 and is all-in
yates04: folds
Alex Burlton: folds
Uncalled bet (276862) returned to magnumtwo
*** FLOP *** [9s 8d Jc]
*** TURN *** [9s 8d Jc] [4c]
*** RIVER *** [9s 8d Jc 4c] [5d]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
magnumtwo: shows [As Ah] (a pair of Aces)
Nalteo: shows [Ad Kc] (high card Ace)
magnumtwo collected 827204 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 827204 | Rake 0
Board [9s 8d Jc 4c 5d]
Seat 1: Nalteo (button) showed [Ad Kc] and lost with high card Ace
Seat 3: magnumtwo (small blind) showed [As Ah] and won (827204) with a pair of Aces
Seat 4: yates04 (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 5: vovvik folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 6: stefan198219 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 8: roodevic folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 9: Alex Burlton folded before Flop
Interestingly, if the guy with AA had done something weird like flatting I might have reshoved; or at least have flatted and got it in on the flop with the overpair+gutshot. As it was I dodged a bullet and maintained my stack.
My stack saw me through to the final table where my play started to become a bit rough (it WAS 4:00AM...). Despite being in shoving range just about I was still smallballing hands like 99 and AQs; i dodged 99 < KK simply through playing overly cautiously. My one regret was opening AQs and getting a bigstack idiot calling me, then having to check/fold a 996 flop. I figure i may have lost the chance to double there if he'd had AJ or something but you never know, maybe he had a PP or AK. My stack bounced around between 900k and 1,300,000 until there were 4 of us left, at which point my stack had just dropped below the 1,000,000 mark. The other stacks were all 2,000,000+ and the starting pot was 150,000... so i decided to just play my standard shove/fold game like it was any other final table.
And well, with 850k left I pushed Q9o BvB. I figured my stack still had enormous fold equity; especially given the scale of the prizes. It seemed a pretty standard shove; he tanked and called with A9s to KO me in 4th. A $467 cash for me though - a handsome reward indeed!
Comments
GJ on the donkament. takes alot of luck and patience and i guess some skill. but i have played some of these and skill is definetly the least important of the 3 things. QQ with an open shove and reshove is instant fold for me unless im real short but if u dont like folding gj.
wasnt an open shove; it was a shortstack shoving over my initial raise. As it turned out he had AK, which tbh is at the top of his range. He can have AQ, JJ, TT, 99 etc easily there, or sometimes even worse.
and tbh it is all in pretty late position; the reshover can have AK and stuff a lot. So i guess in that sense i was ~lucky. It could quite easily have gone with me folding, them both flipping AK and the flop coming Q22 to put me on monster tilt lol.
MTTs mainly, but im venturing into STTs in the new year =]
Ive found the $2.20 180mans on pokerstars to be the most profitable tournaments ive done; and ive got lucky in some random guarantee tournaments etc which has helped boost the profits too.
nasty o_o;
yeah if youve got the bankroll and/or patience for it i'd recommend just getting in huge volumes of those. Its what i'd be doing had i not moved to STTs for this month/year (maybe?). The field is super-weak and a lot of it is auto-pilot ship/fold poker; and its also very exploitable early on if you learn a few donk-ish strategies :P
GL with the grinding ^^
Alex,
Anytime you can FT a field of 4000+ you know you are doing something right. Nice Job! It really takes a lot of patience/skill/luck to make it deep in one of those Donkaments....
Good lay down with the ladies...QQ is my new JJ.....I hate em.
Good luck at the tables!