4 Days 4 Disappointments
GCOOP kicked off this week and I have been grinding every night in the hope of winning the £12,000 GUPKT passport. It has been fun so far; the events are good value and there are plenty of team Grosvenor pros to try and knock out. I have enjoyed the grind but the results so far have been less than stellar:
On day one I play every event and bust everything. Not the ideal start but that’s fine, sometimes you can’t get anything going.
On day two I play every event and bust everything.
Day three rolls along and I play every event and bust everything. I think I see a pattern.
On day four I run up a bit of a stack in event 8 and things are going well for a time. I then 3-bet with AA and bet/bet/shove on Q4292r. My opponent snap calls river with QQ. He played it perfectly, he calls the 3-bet preflop (which seems good) and then calls down which is certainly the best approach. When he check/calls 3 streets this allows me to bluff with something like AK and he also allows me to value bet worse hands. I am still more than happy with my line though, villain is going to call down with AQ, KQ and KK (though he would probably 4-bet me preflop if he had KK). Also, since I have never played with the guy before it wouldn’t blow my mind for him to call it off with JJ, TT or even a nonsense hand like 55, especially as I had been 3-betting a ton. It is only a £30 tournament, some people aren’t in the mood to fold pairs. As day four concludes I have once again busted everything.
I have had a few issues that are holding me back. First, I made several unnecessary bluffs against players who are just not in the mood to fold. I was impatient and wanted to run up a huge stack in the early levels and instead simply busted in the early levels. Second, I made a few light calls in marginal spots and ran into nutted hands. It is hard to tell if I am overestimating how much the average player is bluffing, or if I am just unfortunate to run into a value hand every time. It is probably a bit of both. Finally, I keep losing flips. You kind of need to win the flips if you want to win a tournament.
Satellites
There are GCOOP satellites running every day this week. The satellites start at £0.25 and I would recommend them to everyone, especially players working with a smaller bankroll.
The satellites are great for a few reasons.
- You can win a ticket into a medium-high buy in event for an extremely low investment. Don’t have the roll to to play a £225 event? Just play a £30 satellite instead and get in cheap.
- The satellites themselves are quite soft. Expect to see some dodgy plays, particularly near the bubble where newer players aren’t sure how to navigate.
- Some satellites do not make the guarantee. This means that there is added money in the prizepool in excess of what the players in the tournament have put up (aka overlay). This is completely free value that is gifted to the entrants. What’s not to like?
If you haven’t played many satellite tournaments before, remember that the strategy when you are deep in a satellite is completely different to that of a regular tournament. In a normal tournament your goal is to win all of the chips in play, because the biggest prize is for first place. In a satellite tournament you simply want to win a ticket. If there are five tickets in the prizepool you don’t need to win all the chips in play, you simply need to survive until only five people are left. In the later stages this means putting maximum pressure on people who have smaller stacks than you, because you can knock them out and they can’t knock you out. For the same reasons you want to avoid tangling with people who cover you. One thing to be avoided is calling off your stack near the bubble. Losing the hand means you bust but winning the hand doesn’t even guarantee that you cash!
The Super High Roller
Despite the 4 days of pain I do have a glimmer of hope that I can turn the series around. I won a £30 satellite into the £530 super high roller which takes place on Sunday 2nd December. I wouldn’t buy in directly to this event so getting in for £30 is pretty sweet. This is a new event and should play somewhat differently to the other tournaments in the series. I am expecting a small field of Grosvenor pros and top tournament players, a sampling of satellite winners and then some high rollers who have a spare £530 lying around. This should make for a tougher field than a random £30 event but these are only tournament regs so I’m not too concerned.
I am hyped to play this event. This is the highest stakes online MTT I have ever played, so that is exciting. The field is small and there is a lot of money up top, so everyone has a decent shot at a nice four figure score. And even if I manage to punt it off in level one, I can at least say that I played a super high roller.
Run good, have fun and don’t be a nit.
Conor Nocher
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