WBCOOP Event #20 PLHE Turbo

Hello everyone!

I have been eyeing this event for some time now. To be honest, it presented quite a big challenge for me because... I didn't know the rules of Pot Limit Poker! (Not that I do now but anyway!)

So I did what any ignorant person would do. I sat down in front of my computer one day before the event and googled up the rules. I was surprised at how confusing every explanation would be. I tried a couple of different sites, from Pokerstars' page to Wikipedia  None of them seemed to explain it well enough for me to get it, which resulted in me getting more frustrated.

Yet, all the different sites seemed to agree in one thing: the betting size is indeed complicated and is often confusing for players. Actually, this was the first time I've seen articles warning new players to stay off of a format. In one particular site, after the whole explanation and examples of betting rounds, they had a warning in big capital letters:

NOT A RECOMMENDED GAME FOR BEGINNERS

Of course, I'm the kind of person that if you tell me not to do something then I'll do it and vice versa. So that's how I decided to play this event. In my opinion, that site that had the big warning was actually the best one in terms of explaining the rules (if you want you can find it here). It was the only case I found that would give an example of with blinds of 1/2 and would start the hand from scratch. Other sites would start "Let's assume that the pot from previous betting rounds is X..." and then they would have weird sizes of blinds. Which doesn't make sense, why would you wanna make a complicated situation even more complicated? You're trying to explain something, duuuuh!

Anyway, even that was not enough for me to be crystal clear about the rules. You may think, okay, you're going to play online, the software is going to calculate the betting sizes so you have nothing to worry about. It's true that the betting sizes would be calculated for me, but I didn't want to play a tournament without really understanding what was going on.

I got into a long conversation with my boyfriend about how much you could raise and when. We never seemed to agree and we would even change our opinions as the conversation went on (well, that latest part was mostly me!). Also, we opened up some cash PLHE games and watched how people played which didn't help as much as I had hoped.

At some point, I got how the raises worked but I wasn't 100% sure about the re-raises. In any case, I was tired with the subject so I decided to leave it to that and have a surprise factor when I'd play the tournament. You know like "Ooooooooh, my opponent raised more than I thought he could, awesome, I have to fold now!" 

Event 20 started around twenty minutes after I busted from event 19. "Okay", I thought, I'm only playing this thing so I can concentrate and give it my full attention! We started with 150BBs. I didn't play any hands in the beginning. I think I stole the blinds once or twice but that was about it.

Then I get QJs during the second level. Interesting hand. I was on the big blind. The blinds were 15/30. Since I hadn't been involved in any hands earlier, I had the initial stack pretty much intact. Both players from UTG and UTG+1 limped. There was another limp from the button. The small blind was sitting out so his hand was folded and action came to me. Since that was my first hand in a format I didn't really comprehend, I decided to play safe and check behind. So far so good. The flop came 4d-9d-9s. I was holding the queen and Jack of diamonds so I was on the flush draw! I decided to bet half of the pot, 60 chips. I got called by the player on my left while everyone else folded. Turn: 3 of hearts. Doesn't really change much. The pot was 255, I bet 120 chips. My opponent raised to 240, I called. And then came the magnificent river: 8 of diamonds. I had made a flush! The pot was 735 and I decided to bet more or less half of it, 360 chips. My opponent raised to 900! "Oh my god", I thought, "I got it, I got it! I'm gonna get this guy's chips!". Since he had been quite persistent from the flop, my guess was that he had a nine and was going crazy with his three-of-a-kind. A9 would be a very possible holding.

Of course I couldn't restrain myself to just calling. I had to raise again. The software suggested a raise to 2349. I didn't know how that was calculated and I didn't care. I even forgot to push the betting bar towards the end, that was not the maximum amount I could bet but I was too excited to notice! The opponent called... And showed pocket 33s! He had a full house!

But how could that be?!?!? That was totally unexpected. I spent more time studying the rules of the game than the time I spent actually playing the tournament. The next hands are pretty irrelevant. With 321 chips left behind, it was expected for me to lose soon. I busted in the first 10 minutes of the tournament with pocket 44s when I shoved my 3BBs from UTG.

What can I say? Not really what I had expected for this tourney! I felt a bit guttered, not so much because I didn't make it in the money, but mostly because I lost so early that I didn't have the chance to try out this format.

I finished 281rst which I'm pretty sure is my worst result at the WBCOOP series. On the bright side, checking back on the tournament later I found out that a follower of my blog and old hyper-turbo player "Rainmy" took it down along with the first prize, a $109 SCOOP entry. Way to go Rainmy, congrats!

That's all for now guys, keep checking back for my update on WBCOOP event 21!