POTD #223 Winning Wednesday: Calling Half My Stack with Nine High
Traditionally not a winning play
Winning Wednesday keeps returning to 2024 EPT Barcelona, where I chopped Event #12 a €20,000 NLH tournament with Kayhan Mokri. I swear I’ve won other tournaments and have notable hands in early levels from them, but going through PokerNews live reporting of old tournaments I won (or chopped) can be a little tedious, and if I remember a notable hand I played in a tournament, I’ll usually CTRL+F “Greenwood” in the PokerNews live updates for that entire tournament to search for more potential POTD material. Lo and behold, I found another hand from this tournament to write about.
The main thing I remember about the middle levels of this tournament was that the initial room we were playing in was either so cold or so hot (I forget) that the entire tournament switched rooms to play in a restaurant at Casino Barcelona that had been converted into a poker room for the duration of the festival. The room was nicer than your average convention center ballroom, temperate and we had access to an expanded food and drink menu. It was a little cramped, but the benefits outweighed the negatives.
I did not intend for POTD to have a theme this week, but a throughline in all the hands I’ve written about this week is that they were hands that made me feel like a fish as soon as the hands showed down. On Monday, I called all-in with ace high and was shown top pair. On Tuesday, I shoved all-in with nine high nothing and was shown top pair. Today, I had a relatively big draw, check-called two bets and lost at showdown to a very bad hand, but one that beat mine. I had to ask myself, was this just bad luck, or should I have found a way to win the pot given how weak my opponent’s hand was? When this hand showed down I was very mad, but all’s well that ends well— for me, who chopped the tournament, but also for my opponent Jesse Lonis, who took the chips he won in this pot and spun them up to a fifth-place finish and a four-buyin cash.
Pokernews Update (The update says the open was to 19k at 5k/10k, which … is impossible. I believe it was a 16k open at 4k/8k)
EPT Barcelona 2024 Event #12 €20,000 No-Limit Hold’em
(4k/8k/8k) (SB/BB/BBA) 100k Starting Stack. Registration is still open
It folds to Jesse Lonis (108k) in the LJ who makes it 16k, it folds to me in the SB (~200k) who calls with 9♠️8♠️.
Flop (48k) A♦️K♠️J♠️: I check, Jesse bets 12k, I call.
Turn (72k) 7♦️: I check, Jesse bets 40k, I call.
River (152k): 2♥️: I check, Jesse checks and wins with 5♥️5♦️.
