Sporting Emporium Deep Stack €200+€20 Game

After myself and anto’s great plan of taking on the Sligo 200+20 I managed to sleep through my planned wake up time so we figured playing the Boards/Sporting Emporium Deep Stack 200+20 game was as good an idea! For some unknown reason I fancied a bit of a gamble and Tony (Flushdraw) made a fairly convincing argument for me to play blind Omaha for 20 yoyo’s, I think he may have said “are you playing this??” which was good enough for me. So down I sit and Tony explains the best way to play blind Omaha is to look at your 2nd card 1st, then your 4th, then 3rd, then 1st. so I flip over a nice KING, and the board brings a two fives and a king, nice me thinks, a flop with potential! As is standard in blind Omaha there’s a lot of up and downs, anyway, I find myself down to the river and losing to a straight, only if my last down card is a king do I take this down, and sure enough, a big bright red king smiles up at me and I luckbox my way to a free buy in to the 200 game.

My first table starts poorly as I miss with AK, AQ and 77 and am down to about 7k… then about three or four blind levels go by with little incident and my table breaks and I’m somehow on 10k or thereabouts, that’ll do! My new table is fun, I have Conor Smith at the other end of the table and Daragh (HectorJelly) Thomas is on the big blind on my button. Having read a great deal about HectorJelly on boards I know I’m in for a fun evening and will have to play some good poker to handle him. Sure enough, the first time I limp he fires out a nice raise and I pretty much know this will set the standard for the next while. After a round or two of seeing monsters like J3, T5, K4 I finally look down at AQ, but there’s a raise and re-raise before me and into the muck they go. The very next hand the same happens with AJ.

Then I start to clash with HectorJelly. I know he is likely to raise and re-raise me and outplay me. Its very obvious very quickly this guy is a considerably better card player than I am. I fire out a raise on his big blind, and he asks me how much I’m playing, I’ve T9 and praying that he folds and gladly he does. Blinds go up to 200-400 and next time around I limp into his big blind with KJ and he checks. The flop comes king high and I bet out 700 into and 800 pot thinking that it may look like a steal and I’ve already decided if he reraises me I’m gonna push the rest in. He obliges and makes it 2k and I can’t get my chips in quick enough. He folds and I’m happy enough with how things are going. I’m thinking he might leave me alone a bit now, but the other half of my brain is thinking that he’ll want to beat me in a big pot… unsurprisingly this brings us to our next paragraph…

So it is folded around to me on the button, with HJ on small blind and Vera on big blind. I look down at 75offsuit and call the 400. HJ completes and Vera checks. We see a flop of 742, with two clubs. HJ leads out for 1100 into the pot of 1200, Vera folds. My thinking is that he has lead here with a marginal hand, at least if he has hit a set and is leading his bet size was wrong I thought and if he had an over pair he’d have raised preflop. I was reasonably confident he had a draw, maybe 56off suit or a flush draw, so I decide that I’ll try and take him off it, hope to end it on the flop but I’m prepared to call an all in. I raise it up to 4100, so an extra 3000, so I’m more or less giving him odds to call with a flush draw and if a club hits the turn I can get away from the hand. HOWEVER, calling on a draw is far too passive for a player of HJ’s ability and he pushes. He has me covered and I don’t like that he’s pushed but I go with my instinct and I call thinking I’ll be favourite but not my a long way. He tables 86clubs for a flush draw, I’m a slight favourite but if my maths is right (and its probably not) it’s more or less a coin flip. The turn is a red ace, happy days. But the river is an evil, heart breaking 8 of diamonds! NOOOOO!!!! I fall victim to HectorJelly’s poker sword… I’m not the first and definitely won’t be the last. That was a healthy 32k pot and if I won I’m confident I’d have at least cashed. I’m also pretty certain HJ will go on to take it down or at least make a decent finish.

On my way out I managed to turn €10 into €50 on the roulette table that helped and then when I got home, in true tilt fashion, I hopped into a .50/1 game on PPP. About three hands in and I raise with AK, one caller who covers me. Flop KJ9, I bet, villain re-raises, I re-raise and he pushes… at this point I know I’m beat… but I hit the call but, he shows Q-T for the nut straight. Turn is a jack… river is a king! I am sick luck box!! BUT as I write this same guy who I just robbed, has after robbing me with a river flush! NOT HAPPY! Back to even! Arghh… bleedin’ flushdraws are killing me these days!