Sevens heaven

Since my last blog, I've played live just the once. Fitz EOM, where I at least made the dinner break but hadn't fully digested before I was out the door. It's indicative of the way things are going in Ireland that you see more and more top class players at games like this every month, and my table was a bit of a mare.


I had Donal O'Connor to my immediate right snapping off all my looser opens and three bets, Rory Brown further down banging it in with who knows what spanners after the action went Doke opens, Doc 3 bets, and the table also featured IWF champ Nicholas Newport, and boards regs kakak and sickpuppy. So sick table basically.

That said, I didn't play particularly well, opening some hands I shouldn't given the table dynamic. After my little epiphany recently about suited connector hands not being all that profitable in shortish stack Irish live games, I still couldn't resist playing them, and my exit was a sad case of where I found myself priced in to call off my chips on a draw.

Online I've been solidly grinding. Highlights were a couple of packages landed for the FPS Lyon (basically the French UKIPT) and the Galway IPT (secured in a 3x). I'm running pretty atrociously at the moment online so I've swung up and down in the last ten days to more or less arrive back at the same point. Down a couple of grand if you don't count the packages, up a couple if you do. As I said, been running bad: it's not just the races I expect to lose now but even the overpair/underpair 80/20s. Seems like every time I find aces these days, I also find one guy at the table who after a raise, a reraise and a rereraise thinks sevens are plenty to be getting 100 big blinds in with, and binks the seven on the river. No point in complaining about it although I know you'd all love me to since there's nothing more exciting than hearing about other people's bad beats. I watched Sean Prendiville destroy the final table of the Sunday Brawl on Full Tilt. He lost a number of flips along the way but it made no real difference as thanks to his relentless aggression he kept rebuilding. That's the way I think you should look at the game rather than focusing on individual hands or beats: intelligent relentless well timed aggression ftw.

Online I've been spreading out a bit as I'm now more comfortable multitabling to a much greater degree than ever before. I've also come to the conclusion that rebuys are a much better proposition for me. Certainly my record in them is better, and I think I play better in very loose games which rebuys tend to be early on compared to freezeouts. Rebuys seem to be full of gambley fish too, and late on there are more chips in play so they play a lot deeper and you have the possibility of guys making huge mistakes with some of the gambley fish who have luckboxed it thus far still looking to bang in a hundred big blinds with pocket sevens or a flush draw. So I cut back on some of the smaller freezeouts I've been grinding this week and decided to add the three Ipoker nightly rebuys to the schedule with some immediate results. A couple of cashes and a second in the $100 rebuy last night. Quite annoyed not to win in the end as I went into the headsup with a 2:1 deficit, and then chipped up to a 4:1 lead. My favoured tactic is to keep the pots small and win by attrition rather than one killer blow. My opponent eventually seemed to realise he was getting smallballed to death and just started shoving and reshoving preflop. Inevitably when I did find a spot I felt comfortably calling in (pocket tens), I was crushed by kings. I then lost a race to finish it off. There was one spot I'm pretty sure I made a mistake in restrospect. I threebet AJo to his button raise and he four bet jammed. It was only his first or second four bet (and I wasn't three betting all that much either consistent with my "keep the pots small" strategy) so I decided to let it go but hmmm, AJ is a monster hu and probably too big to be laying down to a 25 bb 4 bet shove. You're certainly very exploitable if you do.

My good pal Jason Tompkins signed up for Bruce using the DOKE10 code, lured in by the prospect of 60 easy bucks for beating me headsup. We were supposed to do it this week but didn't get it together but hopefully next week. I'll try to give advance notice to anyone who follows me on Twitter or Facebook and wants to see the young Athy buck kick my butt headsup. Also, remember the offer is open to anyone who signs up using the DOKE10 code and makes a real money deposit, not just budding poker superstars from Athy.

Next up for me live is this weekend's JP mini WSOP series where I hope to play as many events as I can fit in, and then next Friday I'm off to Lyon for the FPS. I made no real effort to qualify for the Vienna EPT and haven't really done much about Barcelona yet either. Although I like taking shots at EPTs if I satellite in, I find it quite hard to spend a full week away from home which is what an EPT entails, so something like a 2 day FPS or IPT seems more appealing right now. Also hopefully more players who look down at sevens and thinks "nuts". We shall see.

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