I started this tournament with no expectations and no pressure on myself but I really wanted to get some good experience and play with some of the best players in the world and learn from them. We began the tournament with 50,000 in tournament chips with a clock of 90 minutes. I only recognised one player on my table and that was James Van Alstyne who was sat directly on my left.
I won the very first hand against him and won 1k when he tried to bluff me on a 55J board when I called him down with J8. So off to great start I played every hand for the first 10 minutes and was getting settled into the tournament. The next interesting hand was when a young player raised to 300 utg and I called with 78s in position. Four of us took the flop and it came 734 and he bet 600 so I called and the other two folded. The turn came a 3 and he dwelled for a long time before checking and I decided to check behind to maintain some pot control. The river was a 4 and he bet 1200, so I really thought he was value betting his overpair and he had put me on 88 or something. So I decided to raise to 4200 to represent the full house as the board was 74433. He must’ve thought for about five minutes before finally releasing his hand. I think my read was spot on here and it is very hard for him to call with something like JJ or TT here. He might have even folded aces on this board.
As the table was developing I had spotted two weaker players who I had position on which I was delighted about. The plan was to get into pots with them and try to extract as many chips from them as possible. So after seeing a few flops and not connecting I was nearing the first break with about my starting stack when the following hand occurred. I picked up QQ in early position and raised to 250 and got 2 callers and then the big blind who was one of the weaker players I had picked out raised to 1250 so I just smooth called as I had position and QQ is not a strong enough hand to go to war with preflop at this stage of the tournament. The other two players folded and I found myself head up. The flop came a beautiful KQ5 rainbow and the showtunes were going off in my head as he led out for a healthy 2000. Now I was almost convinced he had AA or AK here so I wanted to play this hand fast and build the pot so I could get as many chips as possible. So I raised to 6000 and he looked over and raised quite quickly to 16000. I thought for a while about the possibility of him having KK as I know he has one of 3 hands: AA, AK and KK. Against a different player on the table I could possibly lay this hand down but as I had already seen him as a spot to pick up some easy chips I had to play my hand as the best hand so I was considering whether to just smooth call or try to get all the money in now. I decided to make my move on the flop so I pushed all in to receive a very quick call and I knew that he had me beat then. He revealed his KK and I didn’t hit my 1 outer and that was the last hand before the break and I was left with 3300 chips.
I came back after the break still feeling fine as there was plenty of time to get back into the tournament as the structure is so good. The blinds were 100-200 and a few multi way pots emerged and I called in the sb and bb with hands like QTs and 78s and missed so now I had to switch to short stack strategy which involves no calling and strong preflop play. After two limper I pushed with 55 and took down the pot which added 700 to my stack. I then reraised all in with 88 and the loose raisor folded. I then picked up AA and made it 550 and got two callers and pushed on the Q high board and took down the pot. So within 30 minutes of the break I had increased my stack to 4900.
After posting the blinds the following hand came up which I am not sure was a good play or not. A tight player raised to 700 in early position and got 2 callers and I thought this was a great spot to make a move and pick up the 2400 dead money with my KQs. The first player folded and the middle guy asked for a count and made a big call with his TT and I flopped a flush and was back into the game with just over 10k. I was back into the game and had played well and got a bit of luck at the right time. I picked up more pots which I played pretty standard and I got my chips to 14k before my exit hand which I definitely played REALLY badly. The blinds were 200-400 with a running 25 and the tight player raised to 1400 in early position and a loose “jiggy” player smooth called which could be a lot of hands. I found myself with JJ in the small blind and a real dilemma. I just called which in hindsight was a bad play as I was out of position and in at least a 3 way pot. Van Alstyne called from the big blind and the flop came K85 with 2 spades. I checked as did the other 2 and the loose player bet 3200 in last position which looked like a steal to me but I didn’t know what was going on behind me so I just smooth called and I still didn’t have a clue where I was in this pot. The turn card came a red 2 and I checked and he very quickly set me all in and I went into the tank for about 5 mins. I was really sure he had a flush draw but I do hate calling all in for my whole stack with a weakish hand and you have to be 100% accurate and for his hand to not improve. All of this means I should have folded the hand as I still had 10k and I could definitely come back from that. Another thing is I had seen his reaction to betting the flop and he had gulped which I thought meant he had a weak hand. I decided to make the big call and nearly fell off my chair when I saw him turn over KK for top set and he had played it perfectly to get me to think my JJ was good.
This was a very disappointing way to go out and I was very annoyed with myself at going out in this manner especially after working so hard to get myself back into the game. It was a great tournament and hopefully next year I will be able to go a lot further and use this as a learning curve as I still feel I need to up my game for these bigger tournaments. The winner of this event was in fact the 2001 WSOP World Champion Carlos Mortensen. Seeing these top players being so consistent shows how far behind these guys I am but playing more and more will only improve my game.
- JP Kelly