Jimmy Fricke

Sitting here in my hotel room at an ungodly hour (5 AM) when I have a live 200r to be playing in five hours. Turning Stone casino in Verona, New York was the first place I played real live poker in March of last year. I really enjoyed meeting all my friends here, and this trip has a TON of crazy talent here. There are a bunch of tournaments that are going on so I'm just going to let you all know how things go.

Note, this place isn't Vegas. It's only 18+ because they can't serve alcohol and the stakes aren't going to be massive. But as for gaining experience, I definitely picked up basically all of my early live experience here and met some great friends.

Anyway, today's tournament was the smallest of the series, a $300+40 that actually picked up almost 500 runners. Hopefully that means the bigger events will also be pretty big. I registered late, so I was stuck on a table that included two people I knew, one of whom is my friend Nath Pizzolatto, who picked up 2nd place to Bill Chen last year in the $2500 shorthanded NLHE event. He's definitely has a reputation for being very aggressive, and this is a hand that I played against him in the first level.

25/50 blinds, effective stacks are about 5000. He open limps, which is strange for him but not completely crazy. A fairly predictable player limps behind him and I limp on the button with T8dd. The bb checks and the flop comes 843 with two hearts. The bb checks and Nath bets out 125. I expected him to be betting basically anything in this spot, and my eights absolutely crush his range, especially since I think it's bigger than any eight he would be limping. I ruled out pocket pairs and thought he pretty much has to have a small-mid suited connector in this spot. I made it 375, the others folded and he called very quickly.

The turn was the 2s, putting two flush draws out there and completing the only obvious straight draw. He checks and I bet 700, which in hindsight is definitely too big in retrospect. I should've bet about 500 and would get the same information. He quickly raises to 2k, and at this point I tell myself he either has 65s, 43s or a mid level flush draw. The main thing though that tells me he probably has a stronger hand is his raise size. In my experience, anything between a minraise and a 3x raise is damn near the nuts in the player's mind as long as they have money behind. Nath isn't exactly committed to the hand, but in his mind there's no way he's folding once he makes that raise. I don't really think I've seen anyone make a really small raise like this and then fold to further action if the bettor has already defined his hand thoroughly.

In the actual hand, I make a quick call but regretted after the hand was over (and I'll at least pretend I'm not being results oriented). I don't think Nath is messing around enough this early to make calling on the turn profitable, especially with the read I had about his raise size.

So I called, the river is the Js and he bets the rest very quickly and I tanked for a while but eventually ended up making a fairly easy fold (yay being able to fold). Nath told me later he did have 65s, so take that for what it's worth.

Unfortunately I wasn't in the tournament very long, since right before the third level I am down to about 2500 after the Nath hand when a very loose regular limps from EP for 75 at the 50/75 level (strange level but it really does give us a lot more play). The guy behind him limps and I pick up red kings in late position. I make it 400 and the loose player calls. Flop T76 with two hearts and he checks to me. I bet 500, he makes it 1700, I shove and he snapcalls AT and hits an ace on the river to make it an early day.

Alright, I'm going to try to sleep before the tournament tomorrow so I'll let you all know how that goes. Take care.