GR Series of Poker 2009 - SYKES WINS MAIN EVENT!

I thought this thread was just to advertise the games? Hence my post in the main thread.

Well played all. I felt pretty confident throughout. The hand when I went out: I had folded a couple of times before with when Jebus three-bet me and I had only 3500 left after my raise. I felt there was a good chance I had the better hand but it wasn't to be.

SpaceJebus wrote:

DML wrote:Well done Jebus, you bossed that final.

I criticised your play against me quite heavily, so to see you make all the right moves probably helped my karma in the long run.



Unlucky Rex, well done Jeb.

Thanks

I recorded every game so I'll sort them out later to put up, I think it will be very interesting to see what people make of it. This was the event I was most confident about making the final 2 on as I think my HU play is ok so I'm very happy. Also it means I can actually afford to play in all the other events now as well

HU 4 rollz?

Harsh topic title no? Congrats to Jebus.

I felt I played well in the opening round but it was a shame that it took a cooler to settle it. The game against Aaron was lots of fun as he was very aggressive and I had to keep adapting. Sadly I got a 2:1 chip lead a couple of times but ran into AA and AJ<AQ to swing the balance. Maybe I should have folded the final hand but I'd shoved when he'd left money behind previously so I felt I had some fold equity, plus I felt he had a weak hand. Ah well, move on.

Just watching my game with Gaz from his perspective. I like what I see which is nice.

I can remember what I had in most of the hands. The only hand I think I make a mistake (IMO) is when his two pair is better than mine (6:55, T8 < K7), but the early lead I had taken kept us even.

That was lame that I was out:( Sorry boys, is the next game on Sunday? I should be able to play that. Well done Jebus too!

I've just downloaded satriales video and had a very quick flick through, on a very quick glance I don't think you did much wrong and you may be being a bit hard on yourself. I didn't realise there was a MSN conversation going on during the event, to be fair I'm kind of glad I didn't have it up but did any ony keep a transcript of it at all as I'd love to have a look at it if any one did. Am I right in thinking that you recorded your matches as well Drummy?

I've got the DML video in avi now but I might recode it into mp4 tonight before putting it up, I also forgot that my mic was plugged in on the desk so you can hear me tapping at the keys, moving my seat and very occasionally talking so I might try to remove that as well. The Drumstick and Rex matches were recorded as one long recording as I didn't get a break in between matches so I'll have to try to seperate them up. Looking forward to seeing the games from the other side as well.

Can we change the topic title. Doesn't seem fair to me.

Can upload my vids without net getting real laggy so you have to wait until I don't need to use it and am in.

Since you can't watch the vid I will give some general thoughts. My first game was good vs whiskey. I felt he played great actually and I ran quite good in terms of making hands. The vid will explain more but I liked the way he adjusted to my min raising with some small 3bets, under 3x. Min raising also started I believe which is a great way to break me down a bit. I felt you were unlucky though as the vid will suggest I think there were some reads. I don't remember what but when the vid comes up I will explain what I was doing. I played quite aggressive though.

Already spoke to Aaron. I ran hot there too. Avoiding big pots vs AA and KK and making top set when he had TPTK and making a straight when he had something good. Also making him fold when I only had a flush draw.

Jebus game I ran pretty crap though I really felt I had a huge edge. Doesn't mean he didn't play fine, but I felt his play was so exploitable. I guess only he knows atm but I felt I knew how to play you, just never got a chance. Preflop you do one of 4 things. You open fold, which is rare and fine but lets me know you aren't prepared to play ABSOLUTE terrible hands. If you limp your hand is almost always very weak. Perhaps low suited cards or things like J3s, the dazzle factor. You were prepared to limp call to 4bb though which is not too great. You really shouldn't ever be limping HU. Raise and make use of position. People who know what they are doing will not be too happy about playing hands OOP and you can pick up lots of blinds like this of play small pots IP.

The other two things were a min raise or a bigger raise, usually to 3x. This was bad IMO. You min raise most hands, this is fine, great in fact but there is no point doing so if you are then going to raise your strong/terrible hands to 3BB. Not only this you have a huge timing tell. I know if your hand is strong because if you tank a little and then raise to 3BB you are playing your top 15% or so of hands. Perhaps you have a polarised range, I don't know since there was little showdown due to your aggressive play but I think, correct me if I am wrong that raising to 3BB after a short think is usually massive strength, talking two broadway, most pairs etc. I also don't think you do it with SC.

The problem with this is you don't get value from your better hands and even if you are raising a polarised range preflop it is easy for me to play against. Possibly the most important thing though is that when we get short relative to the blinds I know I can chip into almost all of your min raises. I did this loads with trash just because you min raised very quickly. You folded everytime. Can you see how by min raising 100% of hands, this making it so much less exploitable towards the later stages?

Post flop I let A LOT go. I am fairly sure you were being over aggressive but it's probably just that you were running good too but hopefully I can see from your vids. I think your image was far too aggressive and even if you didn't run good you ran good in the sense I ran terrible! My best hand was AJ I think and you open folded! I had Q3 three times and Q2 within like 10 hands or something. Never hit a flop either but it will be interesting to know how much was you bluffing and how much was running good because if you play more HU SNG I probably wouldn't donk bet anywhere near as much because when I even run pretty average I can exploit this.

We felt (Aaron and I both commentate on the game) that you were donk betting strongish hands which firstly loses you value and is also explotable. Couldn't tell for sure though since lack of showdown but if you donk bet weak top pairs/second pair/maybe even bottom pair then I can ship on you quite a bit or raise if early stages followed with turn bet. We felt you check raised strong hands but again you might have been polarising this range. Convinced you didn't c/r second pair or draws though. Check call = draw or weak pair type/A high. Also I think you checked too fast when you had air as when you did I managed to take the pots down. Also we noticed the donk betting in games vs Zing too. You probably don't want to get into the habbit of betting OOP.

Finally I felt you probably floated/called off quite light which is why I never ended up raising river bets because I only had like 4th pair or worse in most spots and I felt you would call!

Of course all of this may be completely wrong!

From other games I saw sparky vs sykes play the most lol % of hands for the first level. VPIP was more a 6 handed game. Eventually they increased the aggression though!!

The biggest error I saw overall though was raising far too much preflop. In the first level you can raise 3x if you like but after this you should probably be min raising all the time. You can perhaps do 2.5 in the second level but after that DEFINITELY min raising. I saw people betting 300 when blinds were 50/100 or even 250. This is so exploitable when you make it a standard raise, especially when you are against a shortish stack. The idea being that if you raise your opening range to this which is maybe 60%+ of hands but only call a shove with what 10% or something that you give away so much equity so much of the time. If for example I was in the game with sykes vs Aaron when sykes was making 250 raises and Aaron only had 1500 chips left I would be shipping like 100% probably. Of course you might adjust but it's free money tbh. Sorry to uses Sykes as an example but everyone apart from me/Zinger was seemingly doing it. When I say everyone, I mean in the games I was paying attention to, so this doesn't mean everyone. Something to consider though.

And finally timing tells. I think most people probably had huge timing tells in their games. I purposefully take a fairly similar amount of time with almost all of my actions. If in my mind I mentally snap fold because I am playing the board I never actually snap fold. I always let the clock come into play. Similarly preflop I always INSTANTLY min raise no matter what my hands as long as stack are within the obv conditions.

Just my thoughts on most people's game. If you played me I would be very interested to know how you felt I was playing and if you got any tells. Anything you found difficult to cope with etc. I've played a couple hundred HU SNG and lots of cash so I am fairly sure what it is like to play against me since Aaron just does the same back and I strawberry floating hate it!

Great games though all and a very enjoyable first tourney! (Apologies if anything I said sounds derogatory, it's supposed to be constructive but probably not all correct at all!)

Rex McGee wrote:The biggest error I saw overall though was raising far too much preflop. In the first level you can raise 3x if you like but after this you should probably be min raising all the time. You can perhaps do 2.5 in the second level but after that DEFINITELY min raising. I saw people betting 300 when blinds were 50/100 or even 250. This is so exploitable when you make it a standard raise, especially when you are against a shortish stack. The idea being that if you raise your opening range to this which is maybe 60%+ of hands but only call a shove with what 10% or something that you give away so much equity so much of the time. If for example I was in the game with sykes vs Aaron when sykes was making 250 raises and Aaron only had 1500 chips left I would be shipping like 100% probably. Of course you might adjust but it's free money tbh. Sorry to uses Sykes as an example but everyone apart from me/Zinger was seemingly doing it. When I say everyone, I mean in the games I was paying attention to, so this doesn't mean everyone. Something to consider though.

The reason I was raising 2.5BB's was because I initally started out min-raising but Aaron was killing me with the 3betting, where he seemed slightly less inclined to play back at the larger raise size. I also felt that due to his aggressive style making the pots larger would reduce the skill gap (Not enough though as it turned out ) I don't disagree that a skilled heads up player will should probably be min-raising until the opponent adjusts appropriately, but I wouldn't class myself as skilled at hu.

Yeah take everything with a pinch of salt. I wasn't watching any game close enough and given things the other players might do then anything can make sense. Just general observations.

The thing is in HU, the chances of victory are usually at some kind of ceiling, theres always a good chance that you are going to lose. I also felt that I had a big edge, but alas, I lost a key hand, ran out of good hands and then got coolered at the end of my Jebus encounter. I've cooled down about last night, I was just so frustrated to be on the end of a suckout. I think overall, theres a lot of work we could all do on our HU games.

SpaceJebus wrote:Am I right in thinking that you recorded your matches as well Drummy?

Nope.

DML wrote:The thing is in HU, the chances of victory are usually at some kind of ceiling, theres always a good chance that you are going to lose. I also felt that I had a big edge, but alas, I lost a key hand, ran out of good hands and then got coolered at the end of my Jebus encounter. I've cooled down about last night, I was just so frustrated to be on the end of a suckout. I think overall, theres a lot of work we could all do on our HU games.

I don't quite get what you mean by good chance of losing? I'd say I have a 'good chance' of winning at low stakes HU.

I still completely disagree with your view on that hand. The only thing even subject to debate is calling your raise at the flop but I think this is fine. The fact that you describe it as some sort of epic cooler though and that he sucked out is definitely wrong. He was actually holding the best hand the entire time. Out of interest did you even check your equity at the flop? I think if you do so you might be surprised.

I think my HU game is epic btw. So epic that I challenge you to fifty HU SNG games. All free and whoever wins the most ships the other some pre determined amount of money. I will give you 3/1 to win 26 or more games and the most you can stake is $50. Challenge is open to everyone,

DML wrote:I've cooled down about last night, I was just so frustrated to be on the end of a suckout.

Once again, I don't consider it a suck out. Sure the percentages may have been in your favour slightly at the flop but he had a hand the entire way through did he not? Middle pair at the flop, two pair at the turn and rivers the FH when at the same time you river a flush. In terms of hands the only time he was behind was preflop.

Rex McGee wrote:I think my HU game is epic btw. So epic that I challenge you to fifty HU SNG games. All free and whoever wins the most ships the other some pre determined amount of money. I will give you 3/1 to win 26 or more games and the most you can stake is $50. Challenge is open to everyone,

except Phil Ivey.

What are we now, 4-1? Or was it 5-1? Bloody suckout merchants.

I would still like to keep playing you though as a) I enjoy it, and b) I improve all the time.

Haha we can go from scratch if you like. Might be a bit of fun. Probs requirement to be able to play at least two at a time. Also we will finish before Mr Dwan!

My point is that what is he beating at that moment calling a raise? A 9? Hes behind any Queen, any King, and is a dog to anyone with a mega draw or a spade. Any other spade and hes deader then tanktops. Theres nothing that someone is going to raise with there any amount other than a total bluff that he isn't going to be behind, its unreal at that moment I had the mega drawy hand, the only one he could have ever been ahead of. As it was the 3 at the end was a total cooler as it made my second nut flush and his rivered FH. That....IS A COOLER. Its the very definition. I should have shoved pre-flop or on the flop, but we'll have to disagree on that being a good play. It was either a very bad play or he thinks I never have anything and it was a total lack of respect.

I encourage healthy debate here - in my eyes, he made the wrong play and got paid.

DML wrote:My point is that what is he beating at that moment calling a raise?

A lot. You limped into the pot. I didn't watch the game so I don't know how you played the majority of your hands but why should he put you on a king or two spades, or even a queen?

DML wrote:A 9? Hes behind any Queen, any King, and is a dog to anyone with a mega draw or a spade. Any other spade and hes deader then tanktops.

Let's examine the flop now. He isn't a massive dog here at all, in fact he's around 45-50% and until that fourth spade comes there is no reason he should put you on a better hand, it's very possible you could be trying to push him off of the pot. The percentages may marginally be in your favour but he has the better hand. It's unlikely you have two spades, a king is possible but why should he put you on one when you limped into the pot? He has every reason to call.

DML wrote:Theres nothing that someone is going to raise with there any amount other than a total bluff that he isn't going to be behind, its unreal at that moment I had the mega drawy hand, the only one he could have ever been ahead of. As it was the 3 at the end was a total cooler as it made my second nut flush and his rivered FH. That....IS A COOLER. Its the very definition.

I'm not arguing that it was a cooler, but I said it wasn't a bad beat. He was never massively far behind, therefore it's not a bad beat. I will say it again - You LIMPED into the pot. You could have almost anything half playable. As a result of the preflop action he doesn't have to give you credit with that raise when he's holding middle pair, which is often good in HU.

DML wrote:I should have shoved pre-flop or on the flop, but we'll have to disagree on that being a good play. It was either a very bad play or he thinks I never have anything and it was a total lack of respect.

Incorrect, he thinks that you don't have much on this occasion. I don't understand the last part of the above quote at all, frankly, so I won't dwell on it.

DML wrote:I encourage healthy debate here

Absolutely, so please don't take this as everyone "picking" on you as you have done in the past.

Why did you limp Jacks? What had the match been like prior to this hand? Had Jebus built up his stack from picking off bluffs or value betting etc...

DML wrote:My point is that what is he beating at that moment calling a raise? A 9? Hes behind any Queen, any King, and is a dog to anyone with a mega draw or a spade. Any other spade and hes deader then tanktops. Theres nothing that someone is going to raise with there any amount other than a total bluff that he isn't going to be behind, its unreal at that moment I had the mega drawy hand, the only one he could have ever been ahead of. As it was the 3 at the end was a total cooler as it made my second nut flush and his rivered FH. That....IS A COOLER. Its the very definition. I should have shoved pre-flop or on the flop, but we'll have to disagree on that being a good play. It was either a very bad play or he thinks I never have anything and it was a total lack of respect.

I encourage healthy debate here - in my eyes, he made the wrong play and got paid.

DML wrote:My point is that what is he beating at that moment calling a raise?

JJ

DML wrote:Hes behind any Queen

He's ahead of Q2 and splitting with Q3.

DML wrote:and is a dog to anyone with a mega draw or a spade.

He is ahead of As8x/As7x/As6x/As5x/As4x/As3x/As2x/Js8x/Js7x/Js6x/Js5x/Js4x/Js3x/Js2x/Ts8x/Ts7x/Ts6x/Ts5x/Ts4x/Ts3x/8s2x/8s8x/8s7x/8s6x/8s5x/8s4x/8s3x/8s2x/7s8x/7s7x/7s6x/7s5x/7s4x/7s3x/7s2x/6s8x/6s7x/6s6x/6s5x/6s4x/6s3x/6s2x/5s8x/5s7x/5s6x/5s5x/5s4x/5s3x/5s2x/4s8x/4s7x/4s6x/4s5x/4s4x/4s3x/4s2x/3s8x/3s7x/3s6x/3s5x/3s4x/3s3x/3s2x/2s8x/2s7x/2s6x/2s5x/2s4x/2s3x/2s2x/

Where x =/= s

Each of which contains a spade. Not only that he is ahead of all hands involving a gutshot and no spade by a mile (75%)

My problem is you are acting like:

1. You flopped a boat and he flopped quads
2. He made the most terrible play in the world despite being ahead the entire time and having 47% equity.

In terms of the first, I think you need to go and download poker stove because you don't seem to be willing to even look up the equity or consider that in fact, he was ahead of a lot of hands. Considering you apparently play lots of heads up you will know it probably doesn't take much to make that call at all. Second pair has a load of showdown value. In terms of giving you respect, considering some of the quite insane moves I've seen you play 9 handed, let alone HU I am probably seeing the turn there FWIW. I'd think you'd be completely capable of making the exact same play as him and call it an excellent read if you made it.

As for the second point I think you are just laying into him for no real reason without backing it up. When someone beats me in a hand and I think it was a terrible play I just move on. This attitude simply doens't help. You can ask Aaron but I can lose to a one outer and just say "FFS" and then click the next table. Often when I get it AI I don't even watch the table because I am so uninterested in the outcome of the hand compared to watching others play to try and get more information on other tables. When I have lost big hands I also have to accept I was outplayed sometimes. The other day I 3bet someone quite a lot and triple barrelled AK on a J high board. He called my down to the river and stacked me. I was sure he would fold the river but looking back on it he owned me. I accept this, put a note on him and reconsider what I will do next time. I think Jebus personally deserves credit for winning the tournament rather than the "s'pose" that he got. He destroyed me quite frankly and whilst I feel I didn't run too good either he won it fair and square, as fair as poker is, that is.

I'd also like to point out that I said on the night that I didn't think either of you did anything wrong. I am not criticising your play, more your reaction to just one hand in a quite frankly irrelevant tournament. It is supposed to be fun. I think you should just shake his metaphoric hand and move on but perhaps realise it wasn't the worst play in the world at all and considering myself, satriales and Drumstick have all pretty much said they would have done the same then perhaps you should be moaning at us too. I called Whiskey AI pre with J8 and beat his A9s. He said gg and went on his way. Hopefully he picked up something from the tourney and I said sorry because he went out well ahead. Be a good sport and take down the Stud yeah? When you call me on 6th street with just a flush draw though and hit it to knock me out though I will go into mental rage.

+£18 cash tonight btw and no £££ bonus.

This hand is doing my nut in. Its one in a million, we agree to disagree. End of that.