I had a day off on the day of the EPT 1B. I was still feeling pretty sick, but slightly better than the day before, and ended up playing two tournaments.

First up was a 1500EUR WPT side event. It was meant to be a 1000EUR + 500EUR bounty, but it got very few players and almost no one seemed to want to play with bounties, so they changed it to a normal freezeout. I don't remember many hands from the tournament. All I know is the sad fact that I stone bubbled it. First I missed an open ended straight flush draw and a pair against top pair no kicker with 9x8d on AxJdTd9d against A4o on the bubble. Had I won that I would've knocked the guy out and got my first Czech Hendon Mob flag right there. After that I still had about 13BB which I lost J7s

Next up was the EPT 2k turbo bounty, one of the most fun tournaments on the circuit. To those not familiar with the concept, it's an awesome tournament where 1k goes to the prize pool and the other 1k is a bounty. This leads to hilarious spots where it's sometimes correct to call massive shoves with 72o. I played well and quite standard all the way into the money. To be honest I can't recollect almost any hands before the money, except that I made two huge double-ups with ATs against JJ and with QQ against AQ. I ended up chopping one bounty later when I called a 3-way all-in with QJs against QJo and 44 with the biggest stack. I turned a flush draw to scoop it all and get a monster chip lead, but sadly dodged it.

The tourney paid 20 players, and I was one of the chipleaders on the bubble, but to my disappointment I got moved to the table that was by far the toughest in the room with two stacks bigger than me who knew what they were doing. I made a kamikaze ICM disaster 4-bet bluff on the stone bubble when I opened A4o from the hijack with a minraise, SB with a bigger stack 3-bet and I jammed my 23BB stack in. It's been a while since I last 4-bet bluffed with 23BBs, but it was such an obvious spot for him to do it with any two cards. The downside is that because of the bounty, he could be planning to call lighter because of the extra value. The bounty doesn't matter much late in the tournament in reality, but most people don't realize that, so it was a bit of a guessing game if my move was awful or not. Luckily he folded.

The bubble burst soon after, I lost a small flip and was about 3/18 when a nightmare of a hand happened. When I think of all the hands I've butchered during my career, this goes to the top three for sure. I can't remember playing a hand in a live tournament this bad in a long, long time.

So: 18 players left, the average is about 15-16BB, I've got 26BB and the big blind who is the chipleader has about 40BB. He's a young Russian guy I've seen around, someone who I can for a fact tell is very good at poker. I'm pretty sure he remembers me too, and gives me credit for being a good player. The winner gets $70k but there's no real money to be made before the final table.

I'm on the button and find myself with A9o. The SB has 15BB or so, and the BB is our Russian. It's folded around to me and I make the standard min-raise to 40k at 10k/20k. I'm obviously snap calling a shove from either. SB folds and the Russian calls. The flop comes A66 rainbow, and I bet 30k into 100k. The Russian minraises to 60k.

I found this spot to be extremely hairy. Against a random Russian I'm obviously doing my best to make it look like I have a hard decision and just call call call every street, secretly fistpumping inside. This would also be true against almost any random player under 60 years of age. However, I knew that the guy was good, and that he almost certainly thought that I was good. I also look like a young scandi, and no hand reading capable young scandi is ever going to fold to that line since it doesn't represent shit. Basically, I felt like we were on the level where he was definitely not trying to get me to fold. On something like J22 or 664 or whatever I would have had a hard time letting my hand go. But on this flop he's just not trying to pull such an amateur bluff basically ever.

So, where does this leave us? He can well have a six, I'm not sure how wide he defends but definitely at least something like 65s, 76s, and maybe stuff like K6s or 86s? He's getting 5:1 and Russians like to play hands, so that could be a lot of stuff in my opinion. The key part about the hand is the amount of aces he can have. At the time I was pretty sure he'd shove all suited aces and something like A9o+ pre-flop. That's what I would do, and especially with the bounty it'd be a very profitable shove. However - and this is a problem I seem to have a lot - not everyone plays poker the same and I guess it's easily possible he'd flat weak suited aces as well. I still can't ever see him not shoving AT+ pre-flop, but the rest is up for guessing.

Anyway. So he raises the minimum. At this point I have basically no idea what I'm going to do. I end up calling because it seems like it's the only thing I can really do, but I already have the sick feeling in my stomach where I just know this isn't going to end well. Turn is a brick and he bets something like 90k setting himself up for a river shove.

My logic at the time of the hand was played was that he just shouldn't have an ace, and I basically put him on an extremely narrow and idiotic range of 6x. This is the kind of ranging gone bad that hasn't happened to me in a long time. I talked the hand over with Seabeast afterwards and I realized that something I hadn't at all accounted for is that he could have been check-raising the flop with a weak(er) ace to induce me and that was actually his most likely holding. It makes perfect sense - I look like a scandi who's never going to believe that check-raise so I'm going to be running spewy bluffs. It's the best possible way for him to get value with top pair when my range is extremely wide - to rep shit. Since we are 25BB deep BTN vs BB, if I happen to have a six or a stronger ace it's a cooler for him. And he can't have a stronger ace, so my hand is the nuts. What he's usually expecting to happen is that I'm either going to float or click it back, and he'll get to win a sizeable pot or possibly even to stack me with his disguised top pair that I'm not going to believe he has.

When the hand was played, I was entirely incapable of even giving a thought to this happening. I was totally blinded by my fear of him having a six, and my idea of how he'd play an ace (check-call x3). I ended up folding. He didn't show, and I guess there's still a decent chance he had a six, but against his overall range I definitely should have stacked off by either click it back/snap calling the flop or calling turn and river. I can't stress enough how badly I played this hand and how crushed I still am by it. I mean come on, top pair against an aggro young Russian 25BB deep Button vs BB? How hard can it be??? To my credit, at least I wouldn't have pulled a bluff here if I didn't have it, I would've just shrugged and folded to the check-raise.

Soon after I got what I deserved when I got it in with AT against A3 for a pot that would've made me 2/15 or possibly even the chipleader. The flop came a hilarious 333, so I didn't have to sweat it, and I busted in 15th cashing for 5200a‚¬.