Jazzer Takes Down Bluff League

Well I`m really pleased to announce that another member of my league team is going to play the WSOP Man Event. Jazzer has taken down the Bluff Magazine League and won his seat to the big one. Actually the final game is under way right now but it`s all over as second place cannot catch up. An amzing achievement, but I`m not at all surprised because he`s a great player. Two Blind Bullies at the WSOP! Outstanding!

What makes this story even better is that Jazzer only found out about the league by accident. Usually the Bluff games were only being held on the Carbon skin, not the Poker.com skin. The second game was however accidentally put on the Poker.com schedule and Jazzer notced it and decided to play. I believe he won that first game and then the next week when the game had been properly scheduled he had to go and register a Carbon account. He has also had to get up at 3am in the morning to play finishing just in time to go to work so it`s great his dedication has been rewarded.

So huge congratulations mate, enjoy the ME and let`s hope you make a real score out in Vegas.

Selling A Bluff

We see some great plays on tv but this one really stood out to me. I thought this was a brilliantly played hand from Poker After Dark between Eli Elezra and Howard Lederer and I loved the way Eli Elezra played it. It`s the perfect example of how to sell a bluff. Eli tells a story from start to finish and Lederer falls for it.

Stacks are deep but HL has EE easily covered. (HL doubled up the first hand in this tourney, EE was allowed to rebuy)

blinds 150/300

EE raises from utg+1 to 900 with 9h 4s (Obviously EE is just trying to take the blinds here with an early position raise representing strength)

All fold to HL in BB with Js 9d, he calls

Pot is $1,950

Flop is Jd 10s 8d

both check ( EE is happy to take a free card here to see if he can catch his straight and Lederer was possibly planning a check-raise here as he has top pair and a straight draw )

Turn Ks

HL bets 1,100

EE re-raises to 2,200 (Despite everyone telling us never to min raise that`s just what EE does here. I`m guessing the raise is for several reasons. Firstly to find out wether HL really hit the king and secondly to knock him off balance if he was just taking a stab at the pot. It also sets up the bluff on the river)

HL calls

Pot $6,350

River 5s

HL checks

EE bets 5,000 (With HL having only called the re-raise on the turn and the possibility of a flush on the board it gives EE the perfect opportunity to "finish" his story so he fires out an almost potsized bet. HL spends some time thinking through the hand but as EE raised pre-flop, re-raised on the turn and fired on the river HL can`t believe his pair of jacks is good and folds)

Just a great play imo.

OMG

I`m getting hassled to write something. My reader says he`s going to cancel his subscription if I don`t and as it`s been over a month since I posted now seems like a good time. But what to write that is the question? I actually have some notes from some ring games and a few hand histories saved that might be worth commenting on but for now I`ll just throw in a few details about the Forum Team League.

It`s the start of week 4 tonight and I`m pleased to say that we got off to a flying start and before tonights games we have a nice 240 point lead on the second place team Aces Up. We owe a lot of those points to Ramster who has been on fire so far this season finishing as follows in his first four games - 3rd/20, 4th/40, 3rd/20, 2nd/40. Before the season had really started we were joking amongst ourselves about who was going to score the most points and Ram said he was. As he only plays once or twice a week we said he had no chance. Not sure if that`s what fired him up, but if so we`ll have to do it more often.

Our new recruit Zackelwahn has proven a sound aquisition. He`s scored solid points in the 10 seaters and won his first 40 seat MTT with a display of power poker and a few "Zack Attacks". He`s also won himself a seat at this years WSOP Main Event although I`m not sure which site he won it on.

Even our new spare Novi got off to a flyer winning her first 10 seat Omaha game and topping it off by winning the 5x5.

My own season has been a bit up and down. A couple of disappointing results in the 10seaters and the first couple of 40 seaters. However I`m pleased to report I seem to have broken the 40MTT curse with Sundays Omaha game. I started well and took the chip lead when I eliminated two players, Chipraker420 and unfortunately my own captain jazzer32. Nothing we could do there, he was trying to make a play as a shortish stack and Chip called. With the nutflush draw I had to call and it hit on the river. Luckily Chip had a lower flush and called off his stack. From there it was a bit of a rollercoaster, my stack went up and down but I was feeling good and by the final table with 5 or 6 players left I was back in front with a sizeable chip lead. The game was mine for the taking and if I`d taken a decision to call a shortish stack I probably would have won. As it was he bluffed me off a pot and went on a rampage after that accumulating a huge stack by the time we were HU. I was left with no choice but to gamble and unfortunately it didn`t go in my favour and I had to settle for 2nd.

Although I was really pleased to get to the final table and thought I played really well I was sorely disappointed to come 2nd. I really should have won and hopefully it will be a lesson learned for the future.

Anyway that`s about all for now. Knowing me I`ll be back on later to post again. It seems to work that way. Once I`ve finally dragged myself over here to post after a long break I get back into the swing of things pretty quick so maybe I`ll dig out those hand histories or something.

I`m going to wrap it up by going back to those FTL points and our individual scores. If my maths is correct at present I`m leading the way with 320pts, Ram is 2nd with 270pts and Jazzer is 3rd with 215. With the 10 seat PLHE tonight I`ll be looking to expand that lead by as much as possible.