Star City and Pokerstars $1 Million Turbo Takedown

It has been a big weekend of poker with 2 live sessions at Star City and a crack at winning a Porsche Cayman S in the Million Dollar Turbo Takedown.

I went straight from work on Friday night and managed a 10-hour session straight. Sat in the $5/$10 Limit table with 5 or 6 to every flop, capped or not. I decided to play high cards, pocket pairs and suited connectors. In theory, this should be a pretty lucrative game and I'd be interested to see how lucky/unlucky I was using PokerEV. Long and short of it was that I dropped $300 in first 3 hours by coming 2nd each time and having been rivered more often than not. Then I had 2 hands in a row that I won and I was back to all square. Hovered there for another hour and could feel boredom creeping in so I moved to a 80-100NL game.

My 2nd hand of NL, I find KK in the BB. Maybe 6 limpers for 2 dollars so I made it $20 to go. UTG+1 called and everyone else folded. Flop came with 3 low cards, so I c-bet for $20 thinking that it would be enough or tempt a chase by AK etc. Turned a low club making 3 clubs on board so I pushed the remaining $40 into a $90 pot and villain took forever to call. River blanked and I thought I was good, but he turned over a baby flush. Like the Limit table, I recovered this over the hours ahead and cashed in at 3am exactly even to the $. In hindsight, I made the most of the situation with very little to get my teeth into.

In Australia, P-platers can only take one passenger after 11pm which is a really good law. My daughter needed to get to the Presets with her friends, so I scored an unexpected econd session on Sunday night as chauffeur. Exact same story played out. Second hand of NL, KK UTG+1. I make it $10 to go and get 2 callers when the SB makes it $35. Fearing a strong hand, I called to see if an A would flop and attract a couple of other callers too. The flop came A55r 3-ways. SB checked and with only $45 in front of me it seemed like a reasonable play to push it in. Call, All-in and I was in bad shape. Yip, SB had AA, nh sir, bugga. My Limit seat came up and I still struggled with coming 2nd on the odd occassion I got in a pot. At 10pm with 1 hour of play left, I decided to give the NL a go again and lo and behold, I cashed in at 11pm for a total loss of only $6.

Whilst I played my own cards reasonably well, my reads were well off and I couldn't put anyone on hands. If I'm not raising peflop, I fail to define how others play against me. The regulars change gears depending on how everyone is playing. Over time, I'll need to pick up this skill. More thought required.

The Stars Turbo Takedown was a tough little tourney as the blinds rise quite quickly. I had 2 maniacs at an otherwise passive table with 2 dead no-shows to my right attracting aggressive blind stealing and c-betting. With my wings clipped early, I stuck to solid ABC poker. When the bubble eventually burst I was in approx 1700th position with an M of 7, which was above average. They dropped like flies from 10,000 with the payout structure very flat, another $5 for 500 spots or so.

I played fairly solid hoping to double up or steal as the opportunities presented themselves which I did. Critical hand was the SB shoving on me and I had A8o and decided to gamble. The wider his range, the better off that I am and I decided that with the blinds and antes about to eat in for us both this could well be a steal so I called. Alas, he had AKo and the flop of AK7 had me on the rail in 5972nd for $55.

In retrospect, I'd do the same again because of blind pressure on each of us and the fact that the real money requires a top 100 spot at least, more like final table. I probably forfeited $10-20 of ladder climbing equity for a tiny crack at the Porsche. It's important to dream to keep poker fresh!