some final table thoughts

Going into the final table I felt a bit more prepared than I did for the APPT final table. Once we'd played a few orbits I had a pretty good handle on how everyone was playing, except for the eventual winner, I thought he was playing alot tighter than he actually was. Without to much risk I was able to continue chipping up my larger stack while the short stacks were forced to either push or fold in alot of spots. Stack sizes were very good for me as it was tough for them to play back without a hand.

I was much more aware of stack sizes and much more aware of how big my bets were compared to theirs. This was pretty important. At the APPT final table when I raised with KQs against grant levy, I gave him the option to reshove on me with A6o where he thought he had fold equity. This ended up costing me alot of chips in Sydney and I think ultimately making it to

HU. I made bets in spots where it was clear there was no fold equity against me and I had to call off if repopped. I still had to pick my spots carefully and it helped that I picked up alot of Ax hands, hands I could raise call off with.

On the 2nd break the french player from Montreal came up to me and said "we should just not play hands against each other until it gets to hu, how does that sound?" or something along those lines. I'm not sure how serious he was but clearly I was not going to collude. That was an awkward spot to be put in and it was a very inappropriate thing to ask/joke about. From our seats draws it was less likely that we would get involved w/ each other anyways as we were close opposite spots on the table. We did end up getting in a few hands, each one I misplayed slighty and I think I should have gotten more chips out of both of them.

I got lucky to win the flip for 4th place and that nearly cemented my chip stack for hu play.

When we got HU I felt pretty comfortable, especially when he made a huge all in overbet on the 1st hand and tabled 2nd bottom pair. If I had made a huge call there I would have won the tournament, but I had no reads yet on how he was goign to play the HU match and thought I could find alot of better spots. Turns out I couldn't. I think I played the HU well, and so did he. The setups were just not in my favour and he constantly showed me his hands during the match. A ridiculous amount of top pairs, two pairs, and trips. I had to make alot of disciplined folds, it was a pretty frustrating match as I couldn't get alot going, even finding spots to shove were tough, alot of limping and small pots. Thats how I prefered to play the HU match, to keep variance down as I felt I would be able to beat him but didn't go my way. He played well, but I didnt' feel like I was being outplayed, the deck mostly just ran him over.

At the time I was very crushed, getting another 2nd place finish, but I woke up the next day and felt very good about the entire tournament, got lucky and grinded my way to get that far so I'm very happy overall with it now. I just remember how I felt after the APPT final table. I felt not very good about it for close to 2 weeks. So a one night bounce back is alot better.

Throughout the tournament I played with an iceland buddy (Daniell) I'd met at Jaco. Friends with the winner of the WPS tourney where Robin took 2nd a week earlier. He had a very commanding chip stack with around 13 to go. He ended up taking a bad beat, making a few marginal calls and then I took him out in that huge KJ hand. He played really well, a typical aggressive scandi player, alot different style than mine and he used his stack very well. I expected to see him in the final 3. This would have been a major boost for him, so I was disappointed for him when he got knocked out in 12th. A very gracious loser, he'll do really well in the future.

Off to Viejo in an hour here (around a 4 hour drive), we finally ditched our rental car and are getting a van to drive us down there, no more driving on these roads :). The drive last night was horrible.