Mad Man Poker

Somewhere on the HSOP-table of yesterday, when the smoke cleared out there is an ape-corpse decaying.

You might have noticed that my cold run of the last few months (last year?) is seemingly coming to an end and I’m confident enough to go head to head with anyone directly around me again.

We played the first event of the HSOP 2010 yesterday and I started out a bit dissapointed.
Only 6 people bothered to register and only 5 showed up in the end.

HSOP still is an incredibly difficult format to play. What makes it different from, for example, a TPC is that it is a lot smaller, and therefore you have no chance to hide behind a weaker opening table to accumalate chips and strike later in the tournament. HSOP requires a game plan for hand 1 on forward.

Last year I ended up with the most cashes and 5 (out of 9) runner-up results, … but no titles. I got a bad beat in the seven stud, got tricked and outplayed in Razz, played aweful heads up Hold’em and Omaha and ended card dead in stud eight.
Needless to say I had a bit of knot in my stomache when I reported last night to play the 2-7 lowball event.

First of all, deuce to seven in somewhat of an exotic game. You might not say it, but almost nobody plays this. It doesn’t even come across in the big game (Bobby’s Room) far enough for what it’s worth.
The only decent time worldwide to test your lowball single draw skills is at the WSOP.
We however play it quite often. In an enviroment where a lot of people like to avoid limit games, any format that allows you to combine heavy betting and a lot of psychology and position play is golden in our eyes.

I started out with Mickey C on my left. Despite finishing last in 2009, Mickey needs to be taken on carefully in any position game, and besides Thomas Wouters (who seems to have made a sport out of it) I know not a single soul who can rightfully say he outclasses Mickey in single draw lowball.
Yesterday, that soul was Niels Blommaert. He hunted our C-man down like a puppy and the only times the 2009 player of the year was evolving in the right direction was when he obviously avoided Niels.

Niels is a bully, in any game. He’s not that obvious at it compared to myself or Michiel Maes in his agressive moments, but a bully in every aspect. Before the heads up, yesterday, he was the only one in the tournament who made trap plays and 3-bets.
I had however already noticed that Niels main tell in No Limit Hold’em can be just as easily be used in lowball and it took a few monstrously strong plays by Niels to keep me away from attacking his chip lead. In the end however, we were heads up and Niels had nowhere to go. I was already preparing myself for a bashing fest, planning on putting counterpressure on the expected attacks I was going to endure.
For some strange reason, however, Blommaert decided to go with a more carefull approach against me and realised himself he had now just opened the door for me to squeeze him to death. He outdrew a failed play and made a monster call on a queen low, but in the end, the first words out of his mouth right away were of realising he had given me the oppurtunity to agress him and that it had cost him the tournament.

Michiel Maes came in the next seat. Michiel seemed hardly interested at time and even unsettled at moments. This amazed me because, just like Mickey, Michiel is a position player and lowball is a position game. He went toe to toe with his namesake and came out losing in the game of positions. In his defence, Mickey did have a dead stack, courtesy of Thomas Vanbrabant to his left, while Michiel had a very alive Tom De Jonghe to deal with.

Tom is new to our group and started out extremely loose yesterday. Although he quickly saw the error of his way, he had already been batted down a few times and started out needing to rebuild. He all of a sudden became rock tight untill he nicely worked and waited his way right into three handed play and started to open up again.
Unfortunately he had the 2 agressors left then and saw no way to beat Niels and myself at what we do best, putting pressure.
Nice run though and I expect to see some amazing things from Tom.

There you have it. A few months after Mickey became the first to claim a title in TPC (the Omaha-side event) for the open tournaments and titles in the HSOP (HORSE, Razz and stud8) for the “specialist” category I am glad to join him in these ranks.

Next event is the HORSE and I really want to go deep (win, win, WIN) in this one.

The Mad Man