"You should play online!"

Fitz. Scalps. Most miserable tournament ever. Three pots. Won one. Early bath.

That's probably that needs to say, but if you expect brevity, the blog of a man capable of two entries in a single night probably isn't the place to come.

First pot: AKs, utg, raise, reraise, I shove, he calls with KK, I dog the poor fecker. Shove might look a little fruity until you realise this is the Fitz we're talking, the natural habitat of the ace rag merchant, and I'd seen the guy pull the identical move earlier with A3o. That left me actually up 1K in chips at the break despite not having won another pot.

As you can tell, I was sticking to my standard Fitz game plan of sitting and waiting for cards, at least till the push or fold section started. Card death continued after the break so I'd drifted back to 5500 by the time pot 2 happens.

It starts with a relatively short limper UTG, a Fitz stalwart who is also getting a wee bit short flat calling UTG+1. I'm UTG+2 with 10's, I know a small raise is just a pot sweetener, so I make it 1500 or 5 BB's. Folded around to the original limper who dies, then the other guy unexpectedly shoves 4K. A bit disquieting but I've played with him enough times and never see him limp anything remotely as strong as 10's so it's an easy and not unhappy call expecting to be racing at worst, and hoping for a smaller pair. His actual hand is somewhere in between A7. He hit an ace and apologises saying he thought my slight overbet signalled a baby pair and he could get me off the hand. That didn't really make me feel better: hard to know which is more insulting, the notion that I'd pot commit myself with a baby pair in that spot, or that I'd fold to the reraise getting more than 5 to 2 on the call. But at the end of the day I have nothing to complain about: encouraging the notion that I can be made to fold in those spots thereby inducing light shoves is one of the reasons I've made quite a bit overall in Fitz tourneys. And the thing is the shover is actually one of the more effective players in the Fitz fishbowl, precisely because overbets often do mean either low pairs or rag aces, and people will make horrible folds getting 3 to 1 or better.

As tempting as it is to berate when that happens, preferred strategy is to compliment them on their aggressive play, and encourage them to play online more, on the basis that if a weak player like me can make money playing online, they'd really clean up.

Finally, I'd encourage anyone who can to go along and support the Deaf Poker Society's tournament in Molloy's on Sunday. Should be a great game.

Posted in: