BC Poker Championships
Posted: 2007-12-11 14:41:50By: KrazyKanuck
Well, the past few weeks have been fairly quiet for me. I decided pretty much last minute to fly out to Vancouver to play in the BC Poker championships. I flew out in time to hop into the super satellite the day before the main event to hopefully get into the tournament cheaper the following day.
I sat down at my tournament table at the Riverrock Casino to start the super satellite. I had a fairly passive table and hoped that the day, through some aggressive play could turn into a good day for me. The table was playing tight and we had a late breaking order for the table so I knew that I would have a lot of these players at the table for a long time. The unfortunate part about a table like that is that it is tough to make much money off of it because the players are playing so passive and tight. I decided to open up my game a bit right off the bat and start to play aggressively, show some bad hands and bluffs and hopeful create some action for my hands. That actually worked out well, but, my 3 biggest confrontations all worked against me. I had AK three times in round three and lost each hand. I got 2 short stacks all in on 2 different hands and one guy had JJ and it held up, the second guy had QQ and it held up as well. I had almost doubled my stack early with no showdown until I was dealt the AK's. Finally, I raised under the gun with AK of spades and the small blind came over the top all in on me. I had to call but because of my stack size left but I knew from how tight this guy was playing and from the dust that came flying off the pot when he shoved his chips in the center that I was in deep trouble. He had aces....The flop brought some excitement and drama when a King flopped and two spades but the turn and the river were both bricks and my day was over about an hour and a half into the supersatelite.
The next day the main event started with a huge field of players by Canadian standards. I drew a dream table with 2 raving maniacs to my left. I had decided to come out firing right away in this tournament but because I had awful position on these two donkeys I had to be a little more selective on my hands and start to try and play a trapping game. The problem was, if you limped or made a standard raise, one of the guys on my left would come over the top for a ridiculous amount. My standard raise on a $50 Big Blind was $150 to $200 but the guy to my left's standard raise was to $600, about 12 times the Big Blind. If I made it $150 he'd make it $2000 to go. The problem was, the best hand I got in the first 3 rounds was AJ suited and couldn't reasonably commit that big of a portion of my stack on a drawing hand. Both guys were hitting too and had both busted a player doubling their stack sizes. Unfortunately, before they broke my table I never really got a reasonable shot at getting my chips in against either of them in a great draw or dominant situation.
After they broke that dream of a table I got moved to another pretty decent table but a lot less crazy. I got some hands and made some draws at this table but never for any substantial pot. Very late in the day I ran a boat into a bigger boat to basically cripple myself and then ended up going broke on top 2 verses a set to end my day.
The only benefit of being back out west, at least for this trip, was seeing the beautiful Vancouver skyline with the amazing mountains in the background. It was great to be back out west with that scenery and it made me realize how much I missed the mountains and being able to ski and hike as I used to when I lived out west.
More to come.
KK
