It was Queen's Birthday Weekend early in June; time for another round of the Clubs NZ North Island Poker Championship. This year it was being hosted by the Weymouth Cosmopolitan Club in South Auckland, so no away trip required. This event kicks off with a stand-alone tournament on the Friday night before the main event starts on the Saturday. I got my wife to pick me up at work and we were able to avoid the worst of the long weekend traffic and arrived at Weymouth nice and early. I was surprised at first to see there were no tables set up in the main club area and then realised they must be using the downstairs function room for the tournament.
This Friday event was being run differently to previous years; the Weymouth Club had decided to run three different tournaments on the night. They were all re-buy and add-on events with three different buy-in levels: $20, $40 and $80. The higher buy-in options were a bit outside my comfort zone so I opted for the $20 game, as did my wife. We had plenty of time so went and had a bite to eat while the players from other clubs started to drift in. By the time we reached the 7 pm start time there was no sign of any action and we were all just milling about in the club-rooms. But eventually we were given the word to go downstairs for the start of the tournament.
They had about 20 tables set up downstairs, but the organisers were still frantically working on their laptops, trying to get the seating charts set up. Eventually they announced that we should just pick a seat at any table. The $20 tournament tables with their 20k starting stacks were all at one end of the room and each tournament had a different clock set up. So I picked a seat at one of the flash 'Tuakau tables'. These are octagonal tables borrowed from the Tuakau club. They have wooden rails around the edges and are covered with speed-cloth with felt underneath, and are a joy to play on. There were a couple of Aucklanders at my table but the rest were from various clubs around the North Island, and we were in a field of 50 players.
I was quite surprised to find that play was generally pretty loose and passive, although not as bad as it is at my usual Friday night game. Things progressed pretty well but the one major distraction was a particularly loud and increasingly drunk player sitting across from me. She was winning quite a few hands but seemed incapable of remembering what the chip values were, or of keeping her chip stacks from falling over. In the end, one of the other players had to help her to make her bets or calls. Normally I wouldn't let something like this bother me but I'd had to deal with a couple of drunk and/or inexperienced players a couple of days earlier at my Wednesday game, so I was pretty happy when she was moved to another table.
I didn't need to re-buy but I did take the $20 add-on at the first break. As for my progress in the game, my stack had its ups and downs but as the evening wore on it was mostly down. The pivotal hand came when I pushed all-in short-stacked with pocket twos. I was not happy to be called by three people. However my mood changed when I flopped trips and went on to turn a full house, chipping me up nicely. However, the rate of increase in the blinds seemed to be getting higher, so my decent-sized stack dropped in value pretty quickly.
By the time we were approaching the final table I was seriously short-stacked, but so were most of the other players. I had less than 6 big blinds left for most of the last hour of play, so was reduced to a basic push or fold strategy. Some of my table-mates seemed to think I was going for the world record for all-in pushes, but it was a strategy that kept me alive in the game. It was approaching midnight when I reached the final table. Looking around the room, I could see that the other two tournaments were at about the same stage. We were in the money but all still pretty short-stacked thanks to the massively increasing blinds. The remaining players started to drop out very quickly at this stage and when two of them fell victim to the player opposite me I suddenly found myself heads up, playing for first or second place. My opponent was from Stokes Valley in Wellington and he had a bigger chip stack than me. So with the blinds at 60k/120k we started playing heads up poker. We'd only played one hand when the tournament director walked past our table and it occurred to me to ask him what the payouts were, as they hadn't been posted anywhere. When he told me how much the prizes were it seemed like a very good idea to me to split the prize money with Mr Stokes Valley. I put the question and he agreed to split 50/50, so I walked away from the table with $620 for my $40 investment. This was my first ever cash in this event (not counting side games) and I was very happy.
Saturday
We turned up on Saturday morning in plenty of time for the scheduled 10.30 start of the qualifying tournament for the Sunday Main Event. The other 10 players from my club were there. They hadn't played the previous night at Weymouth; our poker organiser had continued to run his regular Friday night game and the others had all played in that. Obviously, I was glad to have come and supported the Weymouth Club's game. When we got downstairs we were surprised to discover that the organisers were still taking late entries for the game, even though the cut-off had been advertised as being a week before the start. There was a single sheet of paper on one of the tables with a table allocation list so things were somewhat chaotic as everyone crowded around trying to find out where they were sitting. But in the end it settled down and we got under way.
There was a total of 172 players and we were playing to qualify for the main game to be held on Sunday. Normally it's the last 48 players who qualify but we knew that with such a large field there were likely to be more qualifiers this time, but no-one had said how many. The blind intervals were 30 minutes long and we'd started with reasonably deep stacks, so there was plenty of time to play. I had a couple of decent collects early on but spent most of my time just watching lots of passive play including an epidemic of limping under the gun.
After 90 minutes of play I was ahead of my starting stack and it was time for a one hour lunch break. When we came back downstairs we were told the game would be delayed. It seems that the players that went to eat had to order their food then wait for it to be cooked, resulting in a long wait for over 100 hungry people. So we had to wait for a while for everyone to get fed. No points to Weymouth for organisation on the catering front.
Eventually play got under way again and the field slowly started to thin out. The blinds began to increase a lot faster and we had several levels where they doubled up, thinning the field even more. My wife had been knocked out and had gone back upstairs to play the pokies and I was starting to wonder what the qualifying mark was. There was a lot of speculation about this at our table; we thought it might be 56 players (7 tables) but we weren't sure. The TD announced that we'd be playing hand for hand when we were down to 60 players, so we figured the bubble must be at 56. In the last hour of play I had fewer than 10 big blinds (BB) left so I tightened right up. I was trying to figure out if I had enough chips to fold my way to the qualifying mark but I wasn't sure how many players were left, and the TD wasn't saying. So I started standing up and counting the number of players left after every few hands. I thought I could limp across the bubble so just started folding everything.
Most of the others at my table were now also serial folding. Only the big stacks could afford to play if they wanted. At one point a woman at my table got out her phone and took a picture of her hand before folding it. She later told us it was pocket kings. Finally it was announced that we were playing hand for hand. It looked to me like there were only 58 players left. Every time there was an all-in hand play was stopped and a lot of players would go and watch, hoping to see someone eliminated. This happened about half a dozen times before a cheer went up and we were told that we'd qualified. It was about 6 pm and I had about 3 BBs left.
I went looking for some food while they set up the tables for the Second Chance Qualifier, which my wife was due to play in. The catering was not very well organised but I eventually found myself something to eat, then I found myself a cash game to play in. I'd been looking forward to the cashies at this event, but it was a bit of a let down. They were playing dealer's choice, Omaha or Hold'em, with a short stack buy-in. This is the sort of game that a lot of Auckland clubs play after tournaments and I wasn't very keen, but I thought I might as well have a go. At least the Omaha game was being played pot limit.
I lost my starting stack in the very first hand when I flopped top set in Omaha and bet it hard, thinking I had the nuts. Unfortunately, I didn't see the possible straight and ended up giving all my chips to one of my club-mates. So I reloaded and played on but they were mostly playing Omaha and I just wasn't feeling it. I lost more chips when I did hit the nuts but then got rivered. Then I took someone else's chips when I rivered them. Let's play bingo. In the end I decided to leave but had to wait for one full round to do so, so I just folded every hand. It was a $30 loss, but I guess it could have been worse.
The second chance event was well under way and my wife was doing okay so I went upstairs to see what was going on in the clubrooms. I saw that they were showing the first British and Irish Lions game, versus a provincial Barbarians selection, so I watched the end of that. After the game I went back downstairs with the news that the Lions had managed a rather unconvincing win over the Barbarians. The second chance game was nearing the end and I went and found a spot near my wife's table to see the action. The field was approaching the last 16 qualifiers level and there were a lot of short stacks. Knowing how much she likes to gamble, I kept willing my wife to 'fold, fold, fold', although I couldn't actually say anything. She did fold a lot and in the end she was sitting left of the big blind with a stack of about 100k, with the blinds at 30k/60k when the bubble finally burst. A very close thing indeed. Six of our twelve OWMC players had qualified for the Main Event. It was about 10 pm and time to go home and rest up for round three.
Sunday
Once again we were due to start the main game and the consolation tournament at 10.30 in the morning. This time the organisers had everything under control and everyone was was given an assigned table. Their were 72 players in the main game, so probably eighty or so in the consolation event. Both tournaments were to run on the same clock but the consolation players started with a shorter chip stack. The blind intervals were just 15 minutes this time and once again we started with a reasonably gentle blind structure in the early stages.
The early to middle stages of this tournament were pretty straightforward for me. I was just playing my good hands, taking the occasional gamble, and mostly just keeping out of trouble while always keeping an eye on the size of my stack. It was nice to be playing for the win again, rather than trying to limp over the qualifying line. One of our six OWMC players got knocked out fairly early but the rest of us played on into the afternoon.
By mid-afternoon the blinds were getting pretty steep and once again they doubled up several times in a row, pushing the remaining players into increasingly desperate situations. By the time we were down to four tables only my wife and myself were left from the Onehunga Workingmen's Club and the tournament had degenerated into a push-fest. I was just sitting there, nursing my short stack and trying to gauge the right time to get my chips into the middle. On being moved to another table my first hand was KJ and I pushed all-in and everyone folded. My next hand was KJ again, so I announced to the table that I had the same hand and pushed again. Everyone folded. Someone asked me to turn over one card so I obliged. It was the jack so they decided I must have pushed with JJ. I let them believe that.By this stage I had about 12 BBs, which was actually a big stack at this table, but not at all comfortable for me. When Neil, a solid player from the Papakura Club, went all-in and I had 77, I had to decide what to do. I knew I had to double up soon if I was to go deep in this tournament and Neil's stack was smaller than mine. I figured it was most likely a coin-flip situation and even if I lost, I'd still have some chips, so I called. He showed A9 and he hit a 9 on the turn, so I was a seriously short-stacked again. Meanwhile we were down to three tables and my wife was the last of the OWMC players to be knocked out, at about 20th place.
I got moved again and soon found myself with 2 BBs left and the big blind fast approaching. So I min-raised all-in with Q2. Desperate times call for desperate measures. When someone called me with QJ I felt sure that my tournament was over. There was a queen and a king on the flop, but then one of the other cards paired up, giving us both two pair with a king kicker and we split the pot! But my luck didn't hold and my next desperate push with a marginal hand didn't hold and I was eliminated in 17th place. Although it was disappointing not to make the money I was still pretty happy about another deep run in this tournament and another year when I've managed to qualify first up.
It wasn't long after this that they got down to the last nine players and they took a break while the final table was set up. They set this table up in a roped-off area and had a camera suspended above the table which was connected to a couple of big screens, so everyone could see the action. There were five Auckland players at the final table, including Neil. The TD then introduced the players one by one and announced to everyone that the blinds would now be dropped down a level 'to give them a fair chance at playing'. I thought this was grossly unfair on the players who'd had to endure those huge blinds and simply went to prove that the TDs had done a poor job of arranging the blind structure.
Nevertheless, the game began again, with a crowd of people eagerly watching the TV screens. It soon became apparent that all we could see on the screens was a lot of green cloth with a pair of hands dealing the cards, which then disappeared from view. Most of the time we couldn't even see the board cards when they were dealt. There was also someone with a microphone giving a commentary on the action but it was patchy at best and most of the time the audience had no idea what was going on. It was a good idea, but very poorly executed.
By this time my wife had come down from upstairs and we sat and watched the green screens long enough to see a couple of players get eliminated but it was all a bit pointless so we decided to skip the prize giving and call it a day. So, another year, another Clubs NZ tournament, another deep run. As if that wasn't good enough, my wife also had her first main event game and went deep also. And let's not forget the big cash on Friday night. Despite some organisational glitches from the hosts it was an enjoyable and profitable weekend of poker. Next year it's back down to Wellington I believe. I'm counting the days.
