Back2back wins in the Sat Lisboa 75k

So I did a back to back win at the Lisboa tonight. We made a deal when it got down to the final 4 they wanted to chop because we was all even in chips but I asked for 2k more from each because I felt I had a bigger edge and didn't mind playing for first. They agreed so we chopped I got 30k and the other 3 got 22k each.

The thing which I noticed the most about this tournament in terms of improvements in my play is that I use to be very hyper aggressive in mid stage. I've learnt how to tone this down now and pick better spots when I got onto a new table. On final table I folded mid pockets in first couple of hands because I wanted to feel the table out and it paid great dividends.

I felt I made 2 mistakes in the tournament. 1 mistake where I had 80k chips and my read was wrong on an opponent where I had to call 13k more chips I had AJ and he had KK.

Another mistake was when I 3bet a steal on final 2 tables and had to let go of my hand because the guy shoved.

However lets go onto the soul reads.

The 4 key hands which I felt got me to final tables.

Key hand 1

Blinds 25/50
I have TT and 3way in a single raised pot and the flop comes QT4r. All checks to me and I check behind. Turn comes a K and Blind leads for 300. EP re-raises to 1000. I'm not really liking my hand now so I decide to just smooth call 1000. Blind then re-raises to 3k, EP thinks for a few seconds and is all-in.

I put one on a set and other on the straight so I fold my set of tens. Blind had a set of 4s and EP had AJ for the straight. I lost 1500 chips and was down to 3500 from starting stack of 5000 but that fold got me the final table....

Key hand 2

Blinds 25/50 I had QQ and the btn limps. I make it 300 and btn smooth calls quickly...

Flop comes Axx and I check, btn near instant bets out I smooth call. Turn comes a J. I check again btn bets near pot again. Now I'm thinking what am I representing here... I am surely representing a big ace like AK/AQ/AT. Villian limped call. His range could be weaker aces but I discounted this because they had showdown value. Hence I put him on a weaker PP or a FD Semi bluff. I call the turn and river goes check/check and I win the pot, I show QQ and he mucks quickly. However I ask to see his cards, reason being I wanted to see what he was bluffing me with. What do you think of this? Is it bad etiquette or do you think its fine?

Key hand 3

Blinds 100/200

I call EP raiser of 600 him and me are both big stacks on the table approx about 14k in chips at this point. I have J8s. Flop comes QhTh9x (Oh boy...) He checks its 3 way and the pot is about 1900. I bet 500 into 1900 and other caller folds and EP smooth calls. Now I'm thinking he must have a pair or could possibly be drawing. Like QJ/AQ/TJ. Turn comes an Ace which is a good card for me. He checks and I decided to represent a FD so I bet big this time, if he had AQ I wanted him to re-raise me all-in. So I bet 2500 into the pot and he thinks for awhile then calls. Now I'm pretty sure he doesn't have KJ by now since he wouldn't let me draw to a flush and I don't think he has AQ so I put him on AT/QJ/AK. River comes a Q. He checks and I think for about 4-5 seconds and shove all-in. He tanks for awhile and calls my all-in shove with AK. He didnt put me on the straight...

Key hand 4

Blinds 100/200 25 ante

Okay I've been stealing twice now from late at 850 a time and the third time I get dealt Q8o and I raise again. This time the SB 3bets me to 2850 he has about 4-5k behind. I have about 25kish at this point. I thought to myself I doubt he has a big hand and he could possibly be 3betting me light cos he knows I am stealing wide so I decided to flat call and play him in position.

Flop comes Kd8s7s He spents 3-4 seconds thinking and he moves all-in for 5k. I get up and I start talking and asking him questions. Basically was looking at certain parts of his body and a tell I got before from when he bluffed me was present again. However he could have 99-QQ which he turned into a bluff so I didn't want to rule that out. I felt he didnt have the K since he could only have KQ or AK and the timing of his shove didnt really look like that hand. So I started saying out loud I have KQ - can you beat that? second low confidence tell so I'm happy. I goes hmmm well you definitely dont have QQ since I have a Q in my hand, maybe you have JJs? No reaction so I felt he didnt have Jacks. Finally after 5 minutes I felt his range was mostly air since he displayed quite a few low confidence tells. I made the call with second pair and he flipped over Ac2s. He didnt improve and I knocked him out.

Thats about it for the key hands. I feel my game is developing quite nicely now and I'm going to focus more on concealing my tells. I feel I gave away quite a few tonight but lucky I don't think no body noticed but I know I can't have them when I play the bigger tournaments.

1st pacle in 75k guarantee at Grand Lisboa

I just got 1st place in the 75k guarantee at Lisboa. For me this is one of my pet life goals to take down this Sat weekly tournament. My next ones are to take down a Macau Cup and APPT and so on and so on.

I would like to thank fuzzypup(Al) we have been talking back and forth on email exchanges and he has been helping me with improving my reads in live tournament/cash play. I must say I felt my reads were spot on tonight and (Like a hellmuth quote here) I made some great plays and lay downs.

The biggest laydown I made was on the final table. Effective stacks Me BTN(35k) Shortie in Hijack with (12k) and Big Blind with 28k. Shortie raises to 4k. Now my read on this guy is he is pretty damn tight and he was waiting a long time for a hand. I know this guy limps his marginal hands and raises his big hands. I'm sitting here on the button with JJ. I glance to the left and look at the big blind guy who is nearly the same size as me. He looks pretty interested in the action and the pot. I decided well I can either min-raise but I would have to fold if big blind shoves or if I just limp and he shoves I still lose 4k the risk is not worth it and I am still not sure about the big blind. (Alarm bells here) so I folded.

Big blind nearly instantly re-raises and shortie snap calls. BB Guy had AA and shortie had QQ. That fold I would say won me the tournament.

My tournament style I would say is pretty hyper aggressive at mid stage. I'm still a big fan of doubling/tripling up early and I took a few gambles to get my stack at the start.

e.g. I had Kd3d and I called this guys limp flop was Jd8d9h he checks, I bet half pot and guy ships in at that point blinds were 100/200 and I had 9k and he had 7k. Now I know I'm always behind here but my thought process is this. Give me 16k chips now and not later and I will just final table. my style is chip accumulation and I believe its one of the better styles to get the top 3 places from what I've read about tournament strategy. so I took the 30/70 edge I had against this guy since I know he has two pair/sets/pair straight draaw combos in his range and gambled.

Fortunately the dealer was very cute and she gave me a diamond on the river and that was the start of my mass karnage.

Flips I was in for the tournament at chip risk was AQ v 77 in BB v BTN and AK v QQ in SB against mid pos raiser and btn flat call. Apart from that I played a very non-showdown strategy applying the aggression correctly against the right opponents and making big folds against ones I knew were tight.

I'm pretty excited and am keen to practice my reads since I definitely know this is a part of my tournament game I want to practice more. This is my first place in this specific tournament so am particular chuffed (I get happy easily)

Rebuy Madness and Bunny Hats

So I managed to wear my cabbit hat that seb bought for me. Feel free to ship me stupid head gear if you want me to wear it in the next tournament :)

Rebuy madness was definitely table 2!!!!

I was in seat 3 and what do you know Celina was in seat 4 and had position on me. LOL First hand we went all-in blind and there was a 4 way all-in.

I believe Celina flipped KJ and I had AQ and can't remember other 2 people cards but I helped and went upto chip leader first hand.

Second hand everyone folded to mine and Celina's blind she said lets go again all-in blind. I goes sure so we flipped again and I won.

Robin then came to the table and it got more crazy and basically our table had the most amount of rebuys out of all the other tables out there.

Then it started going downhill for me just before rebuy end.

K9 v QT no good, 88 v Q8 no good, AK v 44 and KJ no good and 1 more hand where I had a slight edge no good.

So after break 2nd hand was five way limped pot and I smoothed called on cutoff with A5 and Celina limps and sb completes and BB checks.

Flop comes AA6.

Big blind over bets pot and I call and he bets big turn and I ship. He checked AQ in a five way pot in the big blind. However agaisnt this opponent I have played with him loads in the past in the local tournaments and I know he would have played a 6 or a pair the same way.

So I go home then I come back later and check on Celina. She is still in with final 3 tables so we was discussing strategy and she finished 2nd in the rebuy event in the end which is a great result but I knew she really wanted to take it down. Her game is solid but I definitely know I would push my aggression more in spots where she folded if she was gunning for first but she got another final table so great work on her part! Congrats.

I'm gonna now focus a bit more on improving my tournament game. I'm getting very good now with reads and live game dynamics with the help of Al one of my former students and together with that and some more books I feel by the end of the year I am going to bring a very strong live tournament game to the table.

I feel like D.N. sometimes in that I talk with people on the table quite a bit but I do think everyone just thinks I'm crazy since I tend to gamble 15-20% of my stack alot if people raise me and call them with ATC.

Alas next macau cup another chance.

And tough jeans I love that HK brand will show you some more pics of the clothes I have from there.

Macau Cup Deep stack event and Main event

In the Deep stack I doubled up on first hand with a set of JJ v AA on a J73r flop.

Action goes I limp UTG with JJ,UTG+1 smooth calls. Blind min raises, I call, UTG+1 re-raises to 300, blind calls and I call.

Flop goes check UTG+1 bets 500, I re-raise to 1300, he re-raises to 4k+ and I ship...

Can't remember what happened in the tournament but I busted out in 37th place out of 120+ where a read went wrong.

Main Event.

I busted out 21st out of 120+ players. 5k starting stack and I got upto about 55k+ at one point. I felt I played very well and made some very good reads, lay downs and calls. At most I was all-in 3 times in that tournament for my tournament life.

Just some key hands. I limped with J2s and flop comes J9J with FD. We get it in on the flop and I double up.

Key hand 2

I have 20k stack, I raise to 600, station calls and another big stack re-raises me to 3,000. (He has a stack of about 10k) I have AQs so I shove. He tanks for ages and finally calls with KK and I miss.

So I'm back down to about 8k chips and then with a combination of raising,bettig on the flop and re-steals I got my stack back upto 20kish.

I get AA and get two shorties (5k each all-ina against me and they hold)

Then another key hand Paul shoves on button for 20k when blinds are 600/300 and 75 ante with 44 I wake up with AA and they hold again for a change.

I them move onto another table and my Q9s loses against AJ for 7k. Then I lose about another 5-6k raising and betting the flop and guy goes all-in on me.

I then get KK in cutoff so I raise to 5k Big blind calls for 5k (Blinds are 600/1200) and 100 ante. Flop comes 68Tr and he checks I bet out and he shoves he has 28k stack. I had about 50k at this point so I make the call and he shows 66 for a set against my KK and they hold.

Then I lose another flip with T7s against A9o when I raise to 3k and shortie shoves leaving me to call another 7k so I do which drops me down to about 15k stack.

Then 3-4 hands later I get TT on the button and UTG which I know is loose raises to 3k I shove for 15k and blinds fold and he calls with AJ and flops an Ace.

So yeah throughout the whole tournament I was only really at risk on the final hand and it call comes down to a flip...

Such is tournament poker a little disappointed but I will get better each time and tweak my game more but I believe I can greatly improve it this year and there are still a couple more macau cups to go.

Tomorrow is the 100 rebuy frenzy tournament.

I will enter to try and get league points.

Macau Cup Day 2

This one I keep short.

The charity event I overslept and didnt make it for it. LOL!

The 3k event in the evening started stack was 4k. I was card dead throughout the whole tournament but changed gears when blinds was worth stealing. Built my stack upto 20k and then when blinds were 200/400 good players raises to 1500. Player x calls 1500 and I shove on button with 99 for fold equity and also a 20% increase in stack.

First guy folds as plan, player x calls (not good) he shows 77 and hits a set.

Fun stuff.

Day 1 Macau Cup

So woke up at 6.30am this morning (well actually i think i was up about 3.30am)....

Did some random poker stuff and worked on a bit of my analytics then heading off to Lisboa around 1.00pm

They had this press thing going on with celebs playing a celeb poker match. Was quite amusing apart from I didnt really recognise any of the celebs lol...

Anyways here is my report in true Jason style.

Mar-19 02:10 MPC Freeroll Free

You get 1000 measley chips in this freeroll and pretty much I got no hands at all.
Basic summary. I double up with K7s defending big blind shove when blinds are 200/100. Move to another table and I get some more chips. Double up a guy who had pocket 66s when I limped called his shove with AKs. then tried to squeeze very next hand with A6s and of course same guy wakes up with AKo and out the comp.

Went off to play caribbean stud poker won $1k then went to play slots and won 1k then came back for satellite.

Mar-19 04:00 Phase 1 - Red Dragon Satellite $220 $200+20

Everyone saying they dont recognise me cos of my beanie.... lol... Had two korean girls on my table of course me being me I started to mess them around. One of them (I swear they were both sisters) was talking to each other in korean while they were in a hand... Got to love the rules here but I guess just playing ignorant is bliss. She drops down to 150 chips then luck boxes her way to like 3k chips again. So blinds 100/200 she decides to limp and me just hoving around starting stack 2k (card dead as usual) decide to re-steal on the button. So I shove with T6s and she folds.

Very next hand she limps again and another limper I have about 3k now from that one steal and I see 86s and I thought yes!!!! this is the nuts im gonna shove if no one raises since the big blind is short anyways (1k) So I shove again big blind calls and she tanks and decides to call off her stack with pocket 44s from UTG for 3k...

Anyways not really understanding logic from that I wield my weapons of mass destruction and get a semi decent stack of course which I use to bully everyone on the table and get a 1k seat to phase 2 of red dragon.

Mar-19 08:10 Event No. 1: $500 Rebuy 40K GUARANTEE** $500 $450+50

I really dont get the point of 40 minute rebuy period and 1k chips for rebuys... Of course I donked off 6 rebuys in total and an add-on. Celina being the cutie that she is decides to oversleep and gets put on the alternate list lol... (80 max) way to go....

So she comes in and she gets seated exactly to the right of me. Then calls floor and asks if she can redraw another table. Is it me or do people hate sitting to the right of me in tournaments? Maybe because I call shoves with 85s and re-steal from blinds alot lol anyways so we banter for a bit and she gets dealt AQ utg which AQ < 99 for me where i lost 2 buyins earlier and she walks into KK so has to rebuy again also.

She gets moved to another table and we swapped some percentages and after the rebuy I get one guy going all-in every second hand. Bryan and another dude just raising, re-raising and going all-in postflop on each other and me proceed to be card dead as usual.

So I decide to re-steal against this perpetual limper and that works well then of course I get 85s which looks like AA to me at the moment. I literally had no cards at all. So I raise to 500, get two callers flop comes Q62r and they both check I bet 600 and the small blind calls. turn is a 4 and I'm thinking oh no it gave me a double gutter so I have to bet now... of course I barrel the turn the guy instant ships and I'm thinking ok I can fold leaving me 1k or I can gamboool and have a semi decent stack to play if I get my 20% on river. Well 5 to 1 don't seem that bad an odds and I know I can do alot of damage if I had 8k chips at this point (blinds 200/100) so I decide to gambool since I pretty much knew I ran into a set or two pair.

So I call he shows a set of 6s and river is a 4 and thats that.

Anyways lets hope I get some cards in day 2. Funny enough I don't ever remember what its like to get a premium hand or hit the board I've pretty much gotten use to playing T8o like its KK lol....



(Anecedote I called in position with 36s in the cash game 30 minutes earlier before rebuy and flop comes J33, PFR checks to me I bet pot he calls, turn is an Ace and I'm thinking yeah I'm gonna pot it again cos thats how I roll and he calls again and I'm thinking ok FD came on turn guy looks like he likes his Ace so he quickly checks and me practicing my I missed my flush draw move (6 came on river) and proceed to push all my chips in. I think I even managed to practice pushing the chips in exactly like the guys Ive seen before who miss busted draws, anyways he calls of course and mucks when I show him the powerhouse 36s for a Fullhouse)

broken hh, nurses and photoshoots

I havent updated my blog in awhile but I thought I just post some randomness.
Poker has been good not much to say on this front apart from it feels like the matrix and neo to me at the moment. Developing new styles and strategies and improving my low variance style game which has either led me to become a total luckbox or I just don’t experience downswings.



Went out a few weekends back to fashion club again, it was nurse night and yeah night was good with plenty of nurses. A pic here for you to enjoy.
I met with Pokerstar’s Celina Lin for dinner the other night together with Fred who from Pokerstars who handles all the Macau/HK side for Pokerstars. We had a conversation about business opportunities and coaching her for cash games. It was quite funny the Japanese restaurant we booked in was literally around the corner from where I lived. Me being the dumbass decided to hop in a taxi and he literally drove and turn round the corner and stopped lol! Yes I did feel quite silly but it gave a good anecdote for the evening.
We also did a photoshoot for the gotrice crew. I must say I really like some of Rachel’s pics they came out really nice. Bring on the asian style 21 lol...
Some pics for your amusement.