O-Poker

I wanted to first congratulate Pirate Lawyer on taking down the Mookie and winning a seat to the TOC. He has been playing pretty damn good in the BBT3 events, so this wasn't a surprise at all.

Live Donkament Tomorrow!!! Weeeeeeee!!!

I'm heading over to the Hard Rock in Tampa tomorrow to play in the biggest tourney that they have ever run - The $600k Extravaganza. It is a $1,100 mtt with that is capped at 600 players. 3oo players start Friday and 300 start Saturday. They play down to 30 players each day. The final 60 players resume on Sunday and play until there is a winner. The payouts range from $1,600 for 60th to $175k for 1st. It might not sound like a big tourney as far as live tourneys go, but it definitely HUGE for Florida where $100 is the max buy-in for NL cash games. Before July 2007, NL cash games weren't allowed and $2 was the max bet allowed ($2/$2 fixed limit).

It looks like I will be at the same table all day based on how they break tables. I'm looking forward to being able to use any information that I pick up without having to worry about the table breaking.

The structure is pretty good, also (see bottom of post). 10k Starting Chips, 1 hour levels. Pretty big antes kick in after a few levels. Most of the players won't be used to dealing with antes in tourney, so hopefully I can steal a few more uncontested pots as the antes get bigger and bigger and the bubble approaches.

The biggest thing that I have trouble with in some of these live tourneys is sometimes evaluating how strong of a hand a weak player has. So often, they think they have the nuts or close to it when they only have top pair,any kicker on the flop no matter how co-ordinated, a draw, an over pair on a 4 to a flush or 4 to a straight board, etc, etc, etc. Since, we are deep it can make some pretty decent hands very tough to play. Suppose I flop top and middle pair, a weak player leads out 400, I raise to 1,200, and he shoves for 10k or bets like 6k. I probably have to to fold what might be the best hand against someone who has never played deep stacked and thinks that their top pair, King kicker is the nuts. I would be interested on how other people deal with these type of players (ones that give off the vibe that they have a monster when it may not be because they don't understand what a monster it). Thoughts? Practice more patience? Try to keep pots smaller? Set simple traps? Make over sized raises? Etc, etc? Any advice here would be great since other than the satellite to this tourney, I haven't played any live mtts since the WSOP.

It shouldn't take me long to spot the good players vs. the clueless players. I know how to deal with the competent players. I am just looking for any advice on how to cut down on the variance of playing against the weak players. I guess just push the 60/40s+ and hope that the 60 side holds up more often than not.

Whatever happens tomorrow should be fun!!


Structure

Level 1 25/50
level 2 50/100 15 minute break after this level
level 3 75/150
level 4 100/200 25ante 15 minute break after this level
level 5 200/400 50ante
level 6 300/600 75ante 15 minute break after this level (race off chips)
level 7 400/800 100ante
level 8 500/100 100ante 1 hour dinner break after this level
level 9 600/1200 200ante
level 10 800/1600 300ante 15 minute break
level 11 1000/2000 400ante
level 12 1500/3000 500ante
level 13 2k/4k 500ante
level 14 3k/6k 1k ante 15 minute break (race off chips)
level 15 4k/8k 1k ante
level 16 5k/10k 2k ante 15 minute break
level 17 8k/16k 2k ante
level 18 10k/20k 3k ante 15 minute break
level 19 15k/30k 4k ante (race off chips)
level 20 20k/40k 5k ante 1 hour dinner break
level 21 30k/60k 5k ante
level 22 40k/80k 10k ante 15 minute break
level 23 60k/120k 15k ante
level 24 75k/150k 25k ante