Tough Table in London

Taken from the pokerstars blog.....Toby Lewis stood up from his table while a hand was playing out and said to us, "This is probably the toughest starting table I've ever had at an EPT."  

To be honest I don't think Toby would give a toss who was on his table. I'm sure he could hold his own with any other eight players in the world however it was a particularly tough table for any tournament. I was on Tobys immediate left, the other six players were Chris Brammer, Tristan Clemencon, Toni Judet, David Sonelin, Tom Middleton, and Nicolas Cardyn. 

It was not nearly as aggressive as I expected and the first four levels went very well for me, I played pretty tight as did all the players with maybe the exception of Sonelin who was pretty active. At the second break I had 34k from the 30k starting, then at the start of level five I lost a pot with pocket tens on an eight high board when I was check raised by Cardyn. I might have had the best hand but to quote Jude Ainsworth "always give them the benefit of the doubt unless you have the information". Of course Jude is talking about the online game where he has plenty of stats to help make his decision but the theory holds firm live too.

Anyway after that hand I had 30k and after calling a few raises with small pairs or suited connectors I am playing 27k when I get AcKc at the 200-400-25 level. I open to 900 and Clemencon playing 16k and Judet playing 45k both call. The flop comes Jc 9x 4x and we all check. The turn is the 10c and again I check, now Clemencon bets 2900. Judet raises to 8750 and the action comes back to me. I can't really call in case Clemencon shoves so I'm either folding or shoving here. Its not a bad shove but its definitively questionable. What was going through my head was I did not think Judet could have a straight (Clemencon could as he was calling most of my raises but folding to c-bets, I guess he thought I was the value) and if Clemencon had me beat I was not going out of the tournament. Another thing was how tight I was playing, they had no reason to think I was not super strong here, all these things added up to me deciding to shove the plant in and hoping for the best. Clemencon clearly did not like it and folded after a few minutes but after another few Judet called with pocket nines.

I miss the river and I'm out the door.

I tend to over analyse the hands in the bigger tournaments, I suppose everybody does, they are the ones you really need to get right. After, I ended drinking in the Vic with Jude and Big Mick G we went through it and Mick did not really like it but Jude thought seemed to think it was ok. That's the beauty of poker I suppose, two of the best players in Ireland and they have different opinions on the same situation.

I ended up playing a £2-£5 omaha game after and managed to pick up the guts of a grand with out really doing much. Maybe there were a few more than usual around or maybe it was the Saturday night crowd but the standard seemed pretty poor to  me and it was a pretty soft game. I probably should have stayed another night a played another session to get some money back but I booked a flight for Sunday afternoon and headed home.

The bank roll has taken a bit of a hammering lately between Kerry loosing and the £5k in London so I'm going to have to put some work in before my next away trip which barring a wsope satellite win, will be the final EMOP in Riga. I played the final last year in Malta and its one of the best tournaments on the calender. There should be a large contingent of Irish over there with a number of live satellites planed and three online satellites every week on Three Kings Poker. Details of the live satellites will be up on Irish Poker Boards soon enough.