[only1herbie]

Well, it was a long night last night and after me posting that I was not a fan of low buy in re buys it was a sure thing that I would go deep. I ran quite well for the first hour and a half getting my stack to about 25k. For the next hour it was touch and go if I crashed and burned or not, my chip stack went down to 9k at one point. This was due to one poor bluff on the river (10K) and letting others hit there three outers by not betting the flop or turn. This was because I was trying to play small pot and not risk my game on one hand.

Somehow I finished this period with about 40k in chips. For the next 3 hours I was card dead, I managed to keep my chip stack intact (ish) with the odd bluff and the fact that I had a serial caller to my left. He would raise or push all in if he had hit but fold on the river if he had missed. A key point came when there were still around 200 runners left and I had 50k. I found QQ. I was watching Neil Channing on sky sports 4 (the bounty thing, and he was very good I would add) and he had just commented on someone’s play (5 handed though) with QQ. They had called a three bet raise and had to fold later in the hand because the flop was not good. He criticised the QQ play for not re raising a point which I agreed with at the time. I had a three bet raise form under the gun, I was in mid pos and decided just to call. The next player then raised 10k, the table folds round to me, what would you do?? Well I just called (left me with 30k ish) I thought is was a squeeze play with Ak AQ. The flop brings an ace, I check and I am faced with a bet for my tournament life, so I fold. The reason I am talking about this hand is because on reflection I am happy with the way I played this hand, I am sure the 10k raiser did have AK and while I did commit over 25% of my chips into the pot I did “get away” from the QQ still in the game. (rabbit cam showed a K for the turn so I was feeling better with the fold).

The best hand I played after this was finding AK of clubs on the button (normally this would have been a no brainier all in). There was a raise of 3bb followed by a all in before the action came to me (this was still before the points), normally my chips (with the small stack I had at this time) would have been all in but I folded. The original raiser called to see a race between AA and JJ (which the JJ won). After that hand I layed down AQ, multiple low pocket pairs to suspicious raises and rereaise (all of which I would have normally played). I think what I am saying about my play last night its not the hands that I won but the hands I layed down or play “small ball” which gave me most pleasure, The only mistake (if you can call it that) I made was the hand that knocked me out. I get KK on the button, the hand is folded round to me I 3 bet and the big blind goes all in, my chips cannot get in fast enough. He hits his two outer and I am out, I am pretty sure if I had pushed all in instead of 3 betting the big blind would have folded. But we live and learn!