News / John Tabatabai / 13 October 2009 / Leave a comment

A couple of days ago I played in the first ever UK televised Heads Up tournament. The buyin was $10,000 so it was going to attract top professionals and this indeed it did.

To give you an idea of how tough the field was going to be, some of the entrants included Tom "durrrr" Dwan, Antonio Esfandiari, Neil Channing, Tony G, Sandra Naujoks, Annette Obrestad, Luke Schwartz, Yevgeny Timoshenko, Alec Torrelli etc. The list goes on.

Anyway, in the first round I drew Devilfish, and to be honest I was happy to play a tough opponent in the first round, beat him, get it out of the way and hopefully coast through the rest of the tournament. Boy, was i wrong!

Before we started I had a pretty good idea of how he thought I was going to play and thus how he going to counter that, therefore I was recountering his counter. I was fortunate enough to pick up some good hands early and build a little chip lead. He surprised me with the amount of times he would lead after calling my raises from the button. I quickly thought I learnt how to counter that but what I did not count on was the never ending all in bad luck. I had him grinded down and eventually he opened the button, I shoved with 99 (i dont remember exact stack sizes now, sorry!) and he called with A2spades which given the stacks at the time and the amount of times i was going all in wasn't too bad a play. Anyway, the flop came the obvious sweat 2-4-5, turn blank river, boom, 3. So he doubles up and gets back in the game. After a while, I get him all in with AQ v his A5...flop is lovely...then Thomas Kramser the TD announced that I needed a 5 incorrectly to stay in...as soon as he said that BOOM 5 on turn...again Devilfish doubles up.

We later had a hand where I defended my BB with J7cc the flop came 734 and I check raised him all in. He thought forever and called with 10-7...naturally the board came Q....then 3 for a split pot! arrggghhhh

At another point i again defended my BB with J7cc AGAIN and this time the flop came 4-5-6, I led out, devilfish moved all in (i dont like my play in this spot...i should have check raised...) he caled with A5. I needed any J, 7, 8 or 4. Needless to say it completely bricked off.

By this stage I was getting pretty damn frustrated and made a huge error in a decisive pot which started by me min raising the button, he called. I had K3o. The flop came KJ2 with 2 diamonds. He led for half pot, I called. The reason I only flatted was because the last few times i raised him on the flop he knew I had top pair hands as he had seen them. So this time i decided to play it the way he thought i would weaker hands. The turn came a blank 5 or something. He checked, I bet approximately half pot and he instantly called. I wasn't quite sure at the time what this meant. The river came the 3 of diamonds. Making me 2pr and bringing the flush. He instantly went all in for about 2.5 x the size of the pot. I was so frustrated with having lost all the previous all ins that I just wanted to end the match. It had been going on for 3 hours and my lack of experience (relative to Mr Fish) made me think in a flawed manner and call only to see what I knew he had, a flush. 10-7dd. It was a moment of madness and frustration that combined to make me blunder so horrendously.

I did learn something though, that I have a long way to go in my live game. Playing the Devilfish HU made me realise how good a reader he is from live tells. Some observations that he made were truly amazing, i thought. For once he also acted with dignity and some grace. After he won, he was shocked after all the times I had him all in and he even said on camera that it was the luckiest he has ever been on tv relative to the number of times he was behind in the all in scenarios and that if he won, or came 2nd he was going to give my $10k entry back !! WOW, a freeroll from the Devilfish. Never thought it would happen, but even the baddest boys out there breakdown and show you their kinder side :)

It was a great game and I hope they edit it well to show the more interesting hands.

Well, i'm off to Marrakech in a few days for the WPT so hopefully I will do better there and can report back with some good news.

Good luck

John

Catch John on the Betfair Cash Tables

Tags: $10k, Devilfish, Heads Up, HU, PKR