/ John Tabatabai / 01 August 2008 /

Today I had the honour of playing in my first pokermillion, a prestigious UK event with a first prize of $1,000,000.

This tournament is notoriously one of the toughest though it retains the crapshoot structure of the other :UK TV tournaments whereby you start with a $100k stack, blinds start off at 1-2k and increase to 2-4k, 3-6k  5-10k! Blinds increase every 21 hands. There is room for play at the first couple of levels, but soon as you 3bet PF and make a cbet you have committed at least 30-50% of your stack. This structure means its very difficult for you to make a single mistake. I have played a few of them in the past, and generally done well, yet to make the finals though so I was hoping today would be different.

Of all the heats I think I had one of the best ones, my biggest worry was Jon 'skalie' Kalmar who luckily drew his seat to my immediate right. The rest of the table included Sammy George, Harry Demetriou, Mikael Johanson and Tim Flanders.

From the onset, the table seemed pretty aggressive so my plan was just to sit back, and wait for opportune moments. I didn't think I'd be able to get away with many moves as the players knew me and are capable of calling me light. Given this, I stayed out of trouble, didn't really get involved in much until the blinds increased to 2-4k. Skalie raised on the cutoff as usual to 12k. Our stacks were both approx 140k. I had AK on the button and reraised to 35k. Flat calling here preflop to disguise my hand in a structure like this serves very little purpose, especially when there is already 18k in the pot plus my image from previous plays with skalie should mean I will get no respect here. Everyone folds back to him, he double checks his cards and says something sounding weak but equating to im all in and im strong.

Now, the problem I faced is the structure of the tournament, the blinds increase quickly, and only first place goes through to the final as well as in my opinion, skalie being the most dangerous person at the table. I had barely played a hand until this, and I felt as if he was strong i.e. 10-10 JJ QQ 99 or AK also. 5% chance he had AQ. I didn't think I was ahead but I really think it was the right decision to take this chance for a double up, get in a commanding lead and eliminate a dangerous person. In a slow structure tournament, esp if against a weaker player I would never call here as there would be no need to take a 50-50 when I can outplay them later on and win chips with less risk. Anyway, I elected to call, skalie flipped JJ and we went off to the races. I hit the ace on the river. Beautiful.

Now im in great shape. Mikael though only played 1 hand to date, had started raising a lot, whenever his hand was shown they were premium cards i.e. QQ. He raised again when it was my BB to 11k, I looked down and found 10-10. I had approx 280k at the time and Mikael's stack was approx 130k. What to do? Flat calling gives me no extra info as to his hand, and makes no statement for him to not attack my blinds later on AND 10-10 is a hard hand to play OOP. I made it 38k. He instantly double checks his cards, then counts his chips, thinks, goes to make a reraise and then nonchalantly states he is all in.

Now what? Does he think that I am just playing back because I am fed and I am chip leader? Can he be pushing here with 88 99 AQ AK ? He looked confident but then the tournament director, Marty Wilson put the clock on me, with 20 seconds to go Mikael said to me "do you have AQ?". This kind of chat is OBVIOUS that he is strong especially for a quiet player to start talking all of a sudden. I talk a lot at the tables and know all this. Unfortunately, for some unknown reason I wasn't feeling 100% during the heat and I just snapped and said call. If I had more time I would have made the right decision as I would have majority of time and folded. Of course he had AA. Stupid call.

After this, we shortly became 3 handed, Sammy, myself and Mikael Johanson. They were both playing pretty tight, cagey poker and doing a lot of ch c. I didn't see how with a short stack I could exploit this as they would call my PFR and if I wanted to cbet it would commit over 50% of my stack. The only thing that seemed right to do was wait till the blinds increased then start 3betting all in and picking up nice pots PF. So I stuck to this plan, I folded my run of J2o 95o etc until the blinds got to 3-6k. I was down to 140k and Sammy limped AGAIN on the button. I pick up A5cc in the SB. There is $15k in the pot and I have approx 140k. Sammy has a hard time folding anything PF, so if I raise to 20k he will call, the pot will be 40k, ill have 120k left, ill have to cbet 25k and he rarely folds. Ill be ina huge pot OOP against someone who can really have any 2. I didn't see why I needed to escalate the pot and create a tough situation. So I just called in the SB and BB checked. The flop came a seemingly perfect A-J-8 two diamonds. 80% of the time when I have checked to sammy he has bet and usually bets very strong, pot or a bit more. So, I tried to extract some money with my top pair and checked, BB ch, Sammy on button ch!!! Much to my surprise he checked. Now the plan was to bet out the turn and just take down the pot as my hand isn't strong enough for a double free card. The turn magically brought me a non diamond 5. I took a chance and checked again, BB checked, Sammy thought for a while and bet $8k which was a very weird bet for him. I've never seen him bet so small, but I haven't seen any of his hands only the amounts he has bet so far. All I know is the majority of the time he bets strong and now he has bet weak. In either event, I have 2pr Aces up, nearly impossible for me to be behind. My thinking was what does Sammy have, and depending on that I know what to raise to try and get more out of him. To me it seemed like he had nothing and was just taking a stab at the pot as we had both checked it twice. So I decided to make a small reraise to ensure he calls with any 1pr, any draw and also to entice him to bluff my seemingly bluff like move. BB out of the blue asked for a count of my chips, so I humoured him and talked and sounded confused and weak. He then folded as expected but another surprise occurred, Sammy went all in! I couldn't work out what I could possibly be behind to, so I called quite happily.

Of course he flipped over 888. flopped a set.. I don't think there was any way I could have got away from this hand. He limped on the button with 88 when the blinds are 3-6k. Very unorthodox. Board was rigged. 2pr v set. Ah well.

Oh ya, just to amuse yourselves, the following thread was brought to my attention on 2+2:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showthread.php?t=236177

Apparently Americans like to abuse me !!!

Gl guys

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