POTD #124 It's The After Party

The SCOOP After Party. Will I stay awake long enough to remember to bluff?

Blind vs. blind play is always tricky, but it’s especially tricky when playing online poker. I’ve previously described playing blind vs. blind as like playing Zoom heads up, but your stack sizes are constantly changing and the variety of players and play styles in the pool is much larger. There are some HU players who mass multi-table vs. different opponents, but they often hunt for very bad players, because it’s a hard form of poker to multi-table well versus several skilled opponents at the same time. There are practical and degenerate reasons tournament players to mass multi-table: Practically, it’s an easy format to scale, because you are often playing 8- or 9-handed, and when you are shortstacked, you often only have one or two decisions per hand. The degenerate reason for playing lots of tables is that every tournament you register might be the one you win that gives you a payday large enough to turn your day around. There are certain types of pots you can sleepwalk through when your table load is high, because they follow familiar patterns and you normally have a good hand. That is rarely the case in blind vs. blind hands, and if you are regularly leaking EV in these pots, studying to improve your blind vs. blind play will help, but realistically, the best way to stop the leaking is to reduce your table load. If you maintain a high table load, you need to make some concessions, and one will likely be that you are just not going to be a very good blind vs. blind player and that you hope to make the BvB EV you are losing back in the extra tournaments you register.

Today’s hand is from May 16th, 2021, another day where I played a lot of online poker and won money. I put in $80k in buyins, cashed for $273k, paid out $56k in swaps, and profited a grand total of $137k. Technically, my biggest cash was at the GG Super Million$ final table, which took place on Tuesday, and on that Tuesday, Party Poker ran a $25k that I two-bulleted, and I also played some other tournaments, which led to a net loss of just under $70k; halving my Sunday profit. What can I say, money comes and money goes. Writing about days where I won money playing online poker is rare in POTD, but today we’re going to double down by writing about a tournament where I cashed. The SCOOP After Party 52-H, I believe, has the same structure of the SCOOP Main Event, which would mean the starting stack is 250k, and in Level 17 we should be approaching the money.

HH: Pokerstars Replayer

PokerStars Hand #226823603477: Tournament #3186786186, $5000+$200 USD Hold'em No Limit - Level XVII (8000/16000) - 2021/05/16 19:17:44 ET

Table '3186786186 1' 8-max Seat #3 is the button
Seat 1: zÿax (423287 in chips)
Seat 2: rojorulez (894014 in chips)
Seat 3: Päffchen (305230 in chips)
Seat 4: Sam Greenwood (958970 in chips)
Seat 5: pabritz (1440914 in chips)
Seat 6: dantegoyaF (765322 in chips)
Seat 7: Nolet20 (1967046 in chips)
Seat 8: AceSpades11 (819476 in chips)

*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Sam Greenwood [3c Tc]
dantegoyaF: folds
Nolet20: folds
AceSpades11: folds
zÿax: folds
rojorulez: folds
Päffchen: folds
Sam Greenwood: calls 8000
pabritz: raises 40000 to 56000
Sam Greenwood: calls 40000

*** FLOP *** [Kc 4h 9c]
Sam Greenwood: checks
pabritz: bets 32000
Sam Greenwood: calls 32000

*** TURN *** [Kc 4h 9c] [Ks]
Sam Greenwood: checks
pabritz: checks

*** RIVER *** [Kc 4h 9c Ks] [2d]
Sam Greenwood: checks
pabritz: checks

*** SHOW DOWN ***
Sam Greenwood: shows [3c Tc] (a pair of Kings)
pabritz: shows [5d Jh] (a pair of Kings - Jack kicker)
pabritz collected 192000 from pot