FCP Heads Up Tournament Match Against 84jr-Matches 2 and 3

Match two against 84jr was a lot more eventful than match one, but not for good reasons. I played quite horribly I feel and instead of locking up a round one victory as I feel I should have, I let him back into the match and forced a decisive third bout.

I said earlier that I felt like I was favored in the long run against his play. The reasoning behind that was that he had a very exploitable weakness that allowed me to maneuver around him and battle him in small pots. It seemed after match one that he was surprisingly a very timid, almost weak player. He didn't battle back at me too much during the match, and more times than not a bet on the flop following a pre-flop raise would take down the pot. If the pot was limped pre-flop and he checked the flop, a bet was almost certain to take down the pot. This passive strategy on his part was balanced with a tendency to overbet pots at random times with all-ins.

No kidding, many times during the first match he would push for well over 30 or so BB preflop with no raise from me. This, along with the seemingly weak/tight play after the flop led me to believe that I could chop away at a pot occassionally and pick up the blinds maybe 60% of the time to stay in a small chiplead until he got out of hand at the wrong time and I got my money in good.

This strategy worked in match one, as I chipped away until the quad nines hand I analyzed and then had him so crippled he couldn't really recover as I kept pressure on him.

Heading into match two, I felt like I could easily exploit these weaknesses again as long as I waited for a strong hand to play a big pot. I did just that for quite awhile, until the following few hands.

I had JJ on the button and limped. Two or three times previous to this he had taken advantage of my limps and pushed for somewhere around 1100 if I remember correctly. I folded every time obviously but now he tried it and I had the JJ. I felt like this was what I was waiting for and called. He had QQ and nh Jess. I fought back for awhile and a hand came up where I had, I believe, J9. The flop came down J4x and he pushed again. I went with it again and he had J4. After these I learned quickly that his push strategy was probably very effective against low-stakes donks in heads up sngs where inexperienced players will put all of their money in with nothing more than middle pairs and draws, and he was probably treating this match as no differently.

Knowing this, I wanted to go back to my small pot approach, but following the above two hands, I was in desperation mode and wasn't able to recover from the two hands. He took down match two.


MATCH 3

I continued my prior strategy, and it worked very well as I expected. However, the hand that came up that I believe decided the match went down like this...

I was on the button with at 15/30 and limped. He had me outchipped 1530 to 1470 and checked.

The flop came down and he checked. I bet out 60 as I had been pretty routinely. He stopped responding to the half pot bets from the first match so I had stepped it up in round two. He raised it up to 180 and I decided just to call it. I wasn't interested in playing a big pot with this hand at this point, there were a couple hands that might have me and there were a few draws out there as well, and I decided to take off a nice turn card before continuing.

The turn came down and he bet out 300 into the 420 pot. At this point I nearly folded, and looking back I think that would have been the safe play. I could have the best hand at this point, but he hadn't fought back at me with that much strength in awhile and it felt like he had a nice hand at this point. The 7 might have given him two pair and he might already have me in trouble with QJ.

I decided to pull a Daniel Negreanu, though, and call knowing I was beat and hoping it wasn't Q9, as I felt that was his most likely hand the way it went down. QJ I feel he would have raised pre-flop, as well as maybe 33. I called the bet knowing there weren't a lot of rivers I was happy with other than an 8.

The river came down and he pushed for 1020 into the 1020 pot. I thought for awhile and decided to trust my read. I knew I was beaten and folded.

I think I played the hand well until the turn. I should have laid it down to the 300. I knew on the flop I definitely could have had the best hand, but he hadn't shown that much strength almost the entire match and I should have been able to lay it down. I feel like if I lay it down the match would end up differently. As it turned out that hand crippled me and I couldn't recover. He chipped away at me the way I did to him in the first match and although I almost got back to even, it didn't happen. I went on a cold rush and he took down the series 2-1.

Smoke my mind, makes me feel better for a small time,
Jesse