Holdem 100

To the Holdem 100 yesterday held at the Gutshot where I managed to treble up three times by going all-in blind, but still never managed to hold on to any chips. Hold on, I hear you say, The Sweep going all-in blind!!??!! What the fuck is going on?!?!? Well it was a tournament in aid of the Royal Marsden Cancer Hospital so I thought I'd piss about a bit. This is an annual event created and run by my very old friend Conrad Brunner (now a top marketing guy at PokerStars btw). It's always good fun and it's interesting to note that at the first one held at Porchester Hall (10 years ago) most of the players had never played poker before, let alone Texas Hold'em. I remember having to be a table captain and tell everybody when it was their turn, how much the bet was, sort out the side pots etc etc. Now everyone knows what a flop is and that the blinds are going up in two minutes and they're all asking if there are add-ons etc. What a difference ten years makes, eh? To find out more check out http://www.holdem100.com/

Anyway, a sort of interesting hand came up between the eventual winner, Wilson Chan, and the eventual third place finisher, Murray Sharp. Wilson was obviously an experienced tournament player and probably a regular at the Gutshot. Murray is a complete nutter who I have played with before in a couple of private games.

Murray comes to the table with around 14,000 chips. Wilson has about 7,000. We're ten handed and the blinds are 100/200, so still early doors-ish, as they say. Everybody folds around to Murray who is in the small blind. He makes it 600 to go. Wilson, in the big blind, gives it a bit of a dwell and then goes all-in. In the modern poker vernacular, Murray insta-calls. Murray has A5 offsuit and Wilson has 93 offsuit. A nine comes on the river giving Wilson the pot. Ok, so no big deal, it was a blinds skirmish - Wilson got caught making a move and then got lucky. What was interesting was hearing Murray grumble about the hand for a while, muttering about Wilson's luck and so on. I was struck by how quickly Murray called with A5, which let's face it, isn't exactly a powerhouse. However, given that we now know Wilson's hand, it was a great call. In fact, given that we know Murray's hand I think Wilson made a great move too( I certainly would've folded A5 to a re-raise, probably a flaw in my tournament game...). Anyway, I guess I'm trying to say that there's just loads of marginal tournament situations and that I'm still bemused when I hear people saying things like, "If I win that hand I'll be chip leader and then I'd make the final....etc" or, "How can that cunt call?" or, "Did you see what that idiot raised with?".