As I said in a previous post, I sold half my action in the $1.1k Ladies PCA event. I feel that I owe my backers a trip report, so here is my attempt to write one.
This will, however, be the most boring TR known to man. If I take out the breaks, I played for ~7 hours, but it was an extremely boring tournament for me. In fact, I only went to show down (in a non AI pot) twice.
96 women entered the tournament, which was a slightly fewer than I expected. I drew a BAD table. PokerStars player minko23 (ranked on p5s) was two to my left. Victoria Coren was a few to my right. A lot of the girls there played online, and a lot of them had high stakes playing boyfriends/husbands. There was also a lady that final tabled last year.
Something I should clarify is that the table was tough only by ladies tourney standards. This just means that it wasn’t full of limp/calling, 6x raising droolers. Some of them actually raised <3x preflop and played okay post flop.
So I’ll talk about the two show downs I had.
Hand 1: First level, so we were ~200bb deep. I was on the BU and the CO raised 3bb. She hadn’t raised yet, and it was the first time it was folded to us in LP. I flatted the BU with ATo. Flop came Kxx and she checked. I bet half pot and she called. I checked behind A turn and snap called the river (can’t remember what it was) and lost to KK.
Hand 2: I think it was the 3rd level of blinds. I know that I was 80bb deep. I raised in MP ~2.5bb with 99 and the BB called. She had been calling a fair amount preflop and the most important thing to know about her was that she was donk betting extremely frequently. Probably 80% of the time. She had shown down a few donk bets and we saw that she had been doing it with both made hands (TPTK) and bluffs. Anyway, the flop came Qxx and she (of course) donk bet. I was slightly surprised about the sizing, though, which was pot sized. There was no draw on the board, so I was confused. I called. Turn was a A and she bet half pot. I think that perhaps I should have found a fold to this second bet. I hadn’t seen her bet the turn as a bluff yet and she has an ace a decent percentage of the time when she bets. Obv I called, though. River was a Q and we both checked and she showed AJ.
After that hand I had about 60% of my starting chips. I almost doubled up before the 5th blind level, though, without going to show down. I raised Ax suited in LP <2.5bb and got called by a lady that just got moved to the table in the BB. I cbet a flush draw flop, checked back the turn, and pushed over a bet that was 40% of my remaining stack on the river after hitting my flush. Apparently she was bluffing, though, because she folded.
That hand got me to a little above my starting stack, and it was unfortunately the highest my stack would go for the rest of the tournament. I was pretty card dead the rest of the way and didn’t play too many pots. The pots I did play all ended on the flop with a cbet (I won a couple and lost a couple of these… probably broke even overall).
I eventually got moved to a different table which was easier than the first one, but my stack (and cards) prevented me from taking advantage of it. The highlight of the table for me was pushing over a BU raise in the BB with AJ with ~8000 chips at 150/300 25 ante. The BU, who was a PokerStars pro that I won’t bother to name, totally freaked out when I did this. She was like, “WHAT? You’re pushing 8000?! Why so much?! Do you want a call?! I actually have a hand! You probably don’t think I have anything because I’m on the button…” She thought about it for a minute, mucked, and kept asking me if I wanted a call. She said to herself, “Of course she didn’t want a call…” Then she asked me (in an annoyed tone of voice), “Do you play online?” It occurred to me that I could lie about it, but then don’t most of the people at PCA play online? Meh. I told her that I play “a bit”.
The funniest was when her friend came over to the table and she said to him, “You’ll never guess what just happened to me!” I heard her telling him about the hand and then I heard her say to him, “She plays online,” as if that explained everything. Haha – definitely the highlight of the tourney for me.
So blinds got higher and my stack didn’t increase. I got it all-in with QQ and chopped with another QQ. I also got it all-in with TT and chopped with another TT, wtf. I got KK right before the dinner break and shoved UTG with 11bb and won the blinds. I think I could have considered min raising with the KK, but a couple players at the table would have been suspicious of this.
I was disappointed to come back after the dinner break and discover that I had been moved. I had a good image at my table and would have gotten a lot of folds for my pushes 🙁 I got moved to a table with huge stacks in front of me, FML.
I played only two hands at this new table. The first hand I was in the BB and I folded. The second hand I had ~12bb and 55 in the SB. I shoved over a 3bb CO raise. The lady said, “This is probably a bad call” and called anyway with KTs. I lost. GG
I felt terrible after losing that flip, more terrible than I expected. At first I wished that I hadn’t pushed. I thought to myself that I was probably going to be able to chip up pretty decently by open shoving preflop and I didn’t have THAT much FE with my 3bet. I also did not like the fact that it was only my second hand at the table and I had no reads on the lady.
After thinking about it, though, I stopped being results oriented and felt okay with it. I DEFINITELY had plenty of FE versus a random woman in a live donkament with my stack. The fact that she raised 3bb shows that she probably wasn’t an online player, which gives me even more FE (IMO). If I could go back in time, I might not make that push because I think that I maybe have more to gain by open push/folding, but the difference is perhaps so trivial that it’s not worth thinking about.
Obviously if anyone disagrees, please let me know (especially if you were one of my backers).
Thanks to Jono, Josh, and Mike for buying my action. I hope this TR was sufficient (although I know it was super boring. In fact, maybe you’re not even reading anymore, lol). I was extremely disappointed that I couldn’t make you some profit, but hopefully there will be a next time. My ITM is like 50% in ladies events, so I’m practically guaranteed to make a profit next time 😉
This was way longer than I expected. I’ll write again later this week about the rest of my trip. I’m playing online tomorrow which I am excited about because it feels like it’s been a while.
