Secrets of the Amateurs

I had a great day 1 yesterday and finished with 96K. This looked very unlikely at one point. To start with, Phil Galfond sat down 2 to my left, probably one of the 10 players in the entire event I least want to be on my left playing 300BBs. On his left was a player he obviously knew, who turned out to be Shannon Shorr. Two to my right was a player who entered a ton of pots ; initially I thought he might be the value but on the first break I found out it was Scott Seiver. Seat 1 was playing really well too (as Shannon says in his blog).

After getting involved in a levelling war vs Shannon in the last hand before the break (I 4-bet/folded 98s lol) I was down to 23K before dragging my first pot when I rivered a straight against Scott. Then I started to take the aggressive route and reraise pre where possible, which is risky but I think has to be done on a tough table. Through the day I reraised AK and AQ in a lot of spots where I would just have called online. Luckily I hit enough flops for this to work, it's hell when you get called and miss in that spot. It's also worth noting that my high 3-bet frequency helped me in the pot against Shannon below.

A couple of things happened to change the dynamic ; first of all I 3-bet Scott 4 times in about an hour and he passed them all, then he started open-limping and min-raising instead. Shannon knocked Phil out blind-vs-blind and a much weaker player took Phil's seat, in fact I think I took all his chips by the end of the day in about 3 chunks. I started to hit some hands and pick up 10K here and there.

After the dinner break the cracks started to open up in the weaker players, as tends to happen, particularly a couple of older guys who decided to show those whippersnappers that they couldn't be pushed around, with predictable consequences. I 4-bet jammed QJs on Phil's replacement when he made a perfect 3-bet to be shoved on and he insta-folded, next time he jammed on me and I had AA, must be nice. I took about 20K off Shannon in the hand he describes in his blog (at the end), I thought he might have had AQ there. I'd also like to officially confirm here that I was not playing with Shannon's balls.

I 3-bet/folded one towards the end and we only played 3 hands after they stopped the clock (ZOMG this system is so so much better than just playing out the level) so I didn't quite make 100K. Once I got going I really enjoyed it, it was a tough table but at least there was no bullshit, no hollywooding, just a tough game played with respect. I don't recognise anyone on my Day 2 draw, but I have two Frenchmen on my immediate left so that should be fun !

Update : Phil Galfond's ME blog here. I didn't really play a hand with him so I have no idea whether he considered me a "solid young player" or "soft spot" :-). Really surprised he folded KK, he must have had a heck of a tell because the simple dynamic of how often he was open-raising skews the hand to such an extent that I would have thought KK was a snap-shove there.