Live play at the Garden

-Truth

So this week marked the beginning of a new "season" of late night tournament play for me. Garden City has a much earlier tournament than Bay 101, with a better overall blind structure and format. I have several complaints, mostly that GC is a shithole of a card room, but also about their tournament directors rules.

Twice now I've gotten screwed by one of the rules they play differently than at Bay 101. Rule: an incomplete raise, if not announced verbally, is just a call. If you don't put in enough chips to have a legal raise, no raise. At Bay, if the amount of chips you put in is more than 50% of a legal raise, you are obligated to complete the legal raise.

Last night I was heads up for the tournament, the blinds increased from 3000/6000 to 5000/10k. I was on the button and had the 5k blind. I mistakenly matched my 5k stack with 2 others, and topped them with like 3k more, for a total of 18k, intending to raise 3.x more... however, I really only put in a 1.8x raise, which isn't legal.

They pulled out my raise, the other guy checks, then goes all in on the flop. I hit top pair so I called, and he had hit his 74o two pair. If I had actually raised, he folds that hand for sure. So I lost the heads up match because of this ruling. Anyway, its my bad for not either a. verbally announcing "raise", or b. for being dumb about the blind amounts.

I barely deserved to be in the tournament at that point anyway. When there were still 18 players, I was at 1500 chips with a 300/600 blind. I went all in UTG with 42o and tripled up when I turned my wheel straight. I then proceeded to run over all the other small stacks, and went into the final table tied for 2nd chip stack.

Here are some of the feature DONK suckouts I got to be there....

With KTo I called an all-in from QJs, he flops QJ2, I turn a K, river another 2 for a better 2 pair. I had put him on a small pair, and I was racing for about 50% of my stack.

With QJs, I pushed allin from the SB and got under called all-in from the BB who had JJ. I hit my straight to eliminate him.

I chopped a pot at the final table calling a small stack allin with KTo, he showed KTo as well, matched suit over suit.

I also had my share of good laydowns. I folded TT from late position after a UTG raise, and a allin reraise, they showed AA and AKs, 2nd best hand preflop, I would have lost to both of them by the river.

Anyway, it was a night for brutal beats. I saw a guy who flopped 9s full of Kings get run over by the guy who played AK and turned quads. I saw KK that flopped a set get run over by AKs that straighted the river.

Bottom line, volatile and small field, too shallow payout structure (seriously? 6 spots for a 35 player field, thats a 17% payout) but a great time and a great structure. Just need to drum up some more customers for them, and it will be the best game in town. The blind structure beats Bay 101's best structure by quite a bit, ran the math on it and it holds up all the way to level 15-20.