It’s like Christmas morning; if Christmas morning could arrive unexpectedly in mid-October. You hope it’ll happen and deep down you secretly assume it will happen at some point, but it does you no good to anticipate it The moment I speak of was my first big multi-table triumph of the year, which according to my records, came at the umpteenth time of asking. As often happens in these situations fate seemed to play a part. It was Saturday night, for me traditionally a night off from online poker, but other plans fell through and I found myself in a $30 rebuy tournament the like of which had tormented me through the summer. So there I was in a tournament I had no plans to enter and yet 7 hours later I found myself the last man standing of 248 runners with $5400 more than I started with. Good times.
Any sense of pre-ordained destiny was certainly absent when I ‘busted’ on hand 1. A pair of tens is always a hand I will play hard in a rebuy format but this policy would quickly change if I always found myself massacred in this situation, as I was here, by QQ and KK. This setback was the equivalent of a tough tackling centre half picking up a booking in the first five minutes. I would have to tread a little more carefully from then on. I like the $30 rebuy format because I will happily rebuy once or twice and always add-on for value. However, an aggressive rebuy strategy is not the same as a wild and reckless one. I am always reluctant to rebuy more than twice and thus a reload after one hand is certainly sub-optimal and sounds a note of caution. I would still play my big hands hard while remembering that the clock was slow enough to keep me competitive with a mediocre stack after one hour. A willingness to see my stack dwindle quite low before panicking would prove vital later on. I drifted under 4000 chips with an average stack of 11,000 when I pushed 7-7 and doubled up against A-Q. Winning a race was something I was unaccustomed to in the numerous MTT events I had played in the previous weeks. I won’t labour this point because everybody thinks they ‘run bad’ so I should clarify that my luck factor on SNGs had been pretty good in recent weeks I just couldn’t catch a break in the longer format. Anyhow all this was about to change when I doubled through again with J-J vs. 9-9 and then had my big moments of good fortune when K-Q toppled A-9 with a timely river Queen. I was really starting to think it was my night when my 10-10 overturned A-K after a soul-destroying K-K-Q flop. The runner-runner spades on the turn and river snagged me an unlikely flush that had me punching the air.
As lucky as all this sounds I had in reality just won a couple of flips and won a 42% shot with K-Q. If you play a lot of MTTs you should really get a run of fortune such as this quite often and I was long-overdue the roll of the dice after a relentless string of 2-outer dismissals previously. In fact only days earlier I had looked well set for a decent cash when my K-K-K got inevitable action from another big stack with 9-9-9. All the chips went in on the turn before the 1-outer 9 spiked the river. With this in mind I wasn’t about to feel embarrassed about winning a couple of races for once!
Of course when good fortune does pay a visit you must take advantage. I soon found myself as chip leader with 11 left and sought to push home my advantage. Play was six-handed, several waiting timidly for the final table and I was stealing the blinds for fun. To make life easier the good cards kept coming meaning I could stay aggressive without getting ‘out of line’ too much. I had hoped that the frequency of my raises would encourage a feisty rival to play back at me eventually when I had a genuinely reasonable hand. When a medium stack finally did re-raise me all-in I was comforted by the knowledge that my A-A fit neatly into said category of ‘genuinely reasonable.’ Sadly my swagger was to be short-lived as the rockets got outrageously turned over my K-Q. Here we go again. Just as I had felt that it was to be my night half my stack was crushed in miserable fashion. It’s pretty hard to pick yourself up off the floor after a beat like that because what future scenarios could I put myself in with any confidence? Drawing on my experience I had to tell myself that 70,000 chips was still a playable stack even if I was now 9th out of 11; I would now have had a monstrous stack, but for the outrageous. ‘Shoulda woulda coulda’, the last words of a fool, apparently. Not to mention a few aggrieved poker players.
Anyway, the rollercoaster continued as I played my best poker and did get some hands to hold up. A fitting Hollywood ending was ensured when I found myself head-up with, who-else, but my nemesis who had cracked A-A with K-Q. He was a competent opponent and a game of cat and mouse was to go on for some 45 minutes, a long heads-up session by online MTT standards. The key moment arrived when my opponent checked a 4-6-10 flop in position. The turn brought another 4 and I decided that if he checked again he could be very strong but if he bet hard at all then a bluff was on. He did so and I re-raised hard with 5-2o, a gutshot draw, but essentially five high. It was the bluffiest of semi-bluffs but I was confident I could force a lay-down. He called the draw-heavy board. The river card seemed irrelevant and completed no draw so I bet hard again, successfully forcing the fold. It was a decisive moment with a dramatic shift in the chip stacks. A short time after I completed the job calling with A-2 when my increasingly desperate opponent shoved 6-3. It was a gratifying moment of triumph made all the sweeter by the manner in which it occurred.
The $5.4k (about £3.5k) really feels like a bonus, which was always the idea behind my approach. I see the SNGs as the bread and butter which bring the most consistent, steady reward, even with their own pesky variance. The MTTs are the icing on the poker cake.