I use the term semi-free roll because there is no exact
buy-in to get in the tournament, but with each month we play in the Weatherford
cash game we earn $1,000 in tournament chips.
At every cash game, a dollar from the small blind is taken for four
hours and put in a pot that is held until the tournament. From September 2013 to July 2014, I played
eight times and started the tournament with $8,000 in chips. The most a player could have, which three of
them had the maximum amount, was $11,000.
We had a total of 17 players take part in the tournament.
There were a few hands memorable enough worth
mentioning. The first was the only time
I was all in, not counting the final hand, that could have sent me home. I held pocket queens in middle position. The blinds at this point were $100-200 with a
$25 ante. The players ahead of me folded
and I made it $600 to go. The player
immediately to my left, who had somewhere between $12,000-15,000 in chips,
re-raised and made it $1,500. It folded
around back to me. Following my ante of
$25 at the beginning of the hand I had exactly $5,000 to work with.
If I think I am beat by aces or kings I could fold now, give
up my $600 raise, and have $4,400, which was still enough to be dangerous. However, at this point I really can’t be sure
whether I am beat or not. I could call
and see what comes on the flop, which if I then either fold or lose a showdown
without making any more bets I would have $3,500. This is worse, but still an amount I can be
selectively aggressive with. However,
with queens in this situation, I am looking to either double up by the end of
the hand or find out whether my queens are best, and there are two ways of
doing that.
The first is by throwing caution to the wind and going all
in right then and there. I don’t like
this play because if I get called I am drawing to two outs as he wouldn’t call
an additional $3,500 with less than kings.
The second option is to raise an amount somewhere between
$2,400 and $3,000 that allows him to let me know whether he has me beat or
not. If I raise it to one of those
amounts and he re-raises, I will know immediately that I am beat. If he folds, I win his $1,500 and the
additional $500 from blinds and antes without having to see a single community
card. If he simply calls my bet, I have
a good feeling he has pocket kings and is afraid I am representing aces, we
have the same hand, or, which is the most likely scenario, he has a pocket pair
smaller than queens and is just hoping to hit a set on the flop. I decided to go with this option.
I made it $3,000 to call, leaving myself $2,000 and a
plan. My plan was that if he called my
bet, I would state I am all in prior to the flop ever being dealt. This is called “betting in the dark.” By making my bet without any knowledge of
what has come, I am telling him that nothing that comes on the flop could
possibly scare me, which is another way of saying I have aces.
He called the bet, which let me know I was likely in the
lead at this point, and when the dealer was about to deal the flop I made my
statement of all in. The “dark” all-in
bet stunned my opponent and he eventually decided to fold. He showed jacks and I showed my queens. During the table talk while he contemplated
his decision, he told me he just couldn’t fathom how I would make the bets I
did with a hand worse than his jacks. It
is a good thing he folded too, because they ran the turn and river cards and he
would have ended up beating me with a flush as there were four spades out on
the board and he held the jack of spades.
The second hand of consequence was one that I held pocket
jacks. Two players to my right made a
raise that was approximately 20 percent of his stack. I felt he would probably be trying to
double-up on this hand no matter when the chips were bet. The next player, who was to my immediate
right, went all in for a little more than the original bettor’s entire chip
stack. This means the original raiser would
likely call no matter how many people in between called the all-in bet.
I looked down for the first time to see my pocket pair. I was immediately depressed because I knew I
just couldn’t call. It wasn’t that I
necessarily thought I was beat by either player, because the initial raiser
could have simply been making a raise with A-X, two face cards, or a weaker
pocket pair and the second player could be making a move with similar hands
trying to challenge the other short stack at the table. The ultimate reason I knew I had to fold was
because both players would be against me and trying to beat four random cards
with jacks is not easy.
I folded my hand and the initial raiser called, putting him
all in. They flipped their cards and the
second player had pocket queens, which dominated my jacks. While my reasoning for folding wasn’t 100
percent correct, it was still the correct play.
Two other hands I remember were both bluffs that worked
out. In the first example I held A-K and
the high card on the board was a jack. I
made a bluff on the river when all you needed was a nine for a straight and my
opponent folded A-J, which was top pair, top kicker. He was too afraid of the straight to make the
call.
The other bluff was with Q-10 of diamonds. On the river I missed my flush and made a
large bet after my opponent checked the river, who had raised pre-flop, bet the
flop, and checked the turn. The turn
check is where I knew I had a good chance of stealing the pot. I saw an opportunity to win the hand and was
right, as he folded his pocket fours.
The hand that gave me a safe amount of chips about midway
through the tournament was pocket sevens.
A seven came out on the flop giving me a set. I called a guy’s all-in bet when he held
queens and he didn’t hit a third queen.
Another lucky moment for me was when with nine players left I
held aces against kings and all the money went in the pot before the flop. My aces held up and I sat on my stack until
we lost three more players and made the money.
The only other exciting moment for me was when we had 14
players left in the tournament, a single guy held a third of the entire chip
count. Everyone was in awe of how much
he had, but for all the money he held, his table had only lost two players and
he didn’t even knock one of those guys out.
Knowing this guy’s reputation of making money early and then losing it
all back late, I made a comment to the player on my left that I was predicting
with 14 of us left the chip leader, who held $50,000 in chips and leaving
$100,000 to the remaining 13 players, which is an average of $7,700, would be
knocked out of the tournament prior to making any money. My neighbor thought I was a little crazy and
I wasn’t willing to put any money on my prediction, but it turned out he
finished in seventh place.
The final standings were as follows:
1st – Mark Y.
2nd – Me
3rd – Brent
4th – Mark J.
5th – Jason
6th – J.A.
7th – Brandon H.
8th – Jack
9th – Keith
10th – Danny
11th – Joey
12th – Brandon C.
13th – Miguel
14th – Jason S.
15th – Doyle
16th – Jay
17th – Phil
