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Tournament Report: Latvia and Portugal (Part 2)

36 hours after I land on Swedish ground I depart again, this time for Portugal. For this trip I took my family with me and we stayed in a town called Albufeira. The tournament I played here was a €1650 tournament with 420 participants in the town Vilamoura. This whole event was a lot more serious than in Riga with a lot of press and cameras everywhere. I played day 1B and immediately when I sat down at the table I realized things were not going to be as easy as I had hoped for. 8 out of 10 players already had their sunglasses and tried to stare everyone down. There was not a single word said in 2 hours even if I tried to get someone to talk. A former winner of a big European tournament was sitting 2 places to my right and I had a really good Romanian player directly to my right that later ended up at the final table.

Two places to my left I had the mandatory loose/aggressive Finnish player that did not let me see any flop cheaply forcing me to be very tight. After 2 hours I picked up KK in late position. A semi-loose player UTG raised to 400 with 75/150 blinds. Another of the, in my opinion, lesser good players at my table mini-raised him to 800 and I say 2500 (startstack is 10 000 and we all have around that). The initial raiser folded and the mini-raiser instantly pushed all-in. To make the move look even stronger he took his sunglasses and placed them at the top of his head.

Online this would be an easy call, but live, when staring right in the eyes of the player, I had to think for 3-4 minutes before deciding that he usually would not do this play with AA, but more likely QQ or in some cases AK. I am right and my KK hold against his QQ. 2 hours later the Romanian player to my right that now had a huge 30k stack (average 12k) raised first in at small blind. I picked up AKo and re-raised him. This was the 2nd time out of 3 that I did this and he got frustrated and threebet me to total 5800. I had played this hand in my mind so many times and I now know that pushing right away with my 19500 stack was probably the right thing to do here. However I decided to call as I still had average stack left if I missed the flop and when he instantly pushed Q24 flop with a spade draw I had to fold my hand. He showed 35 of spades and later told me he would not have pushed any other flop.

I survived day 1 and totally from day 1A and day 1B there were 134 players left with 45 ITM. Average was around 32k and I had 19875. Blinds started at 500/1000 with 100 ante which left me with some room to play at least. I ended up with a big stacked Portuguese that later ended up at the final table as well. I also had a good Swedish player that I had met in Riga sitting 3 places to my right. I did not think he was too happy about having a repushing player there as he knew my style a bit.

I played a really good shortstack poker when I got the chance. My table was wild and crazy with raises, re-raises and re-pushes all the time. I was up at 28k at most but blinds down to 20 000 when my final hand occurred. A Danish player raised UTG to 12000 with 1000/2000 blinds with 200 ante. I had played with him both day 1 and now for several hours and this made it possible for me to put him on a narrow range. I was rather sure he had AQ or AJ. I had 99 and as I got good implied pot odds (20k to win 45k) I repushed.

I was right with my read, unfortunately did an extremely loose Spanish player at the button found KK for the second hand in a row and busted both me and the Danish player that had AJ at 74th place. I played a €330 side event a few hours later but ends 45th out of 89 there after losing AQ to TT.

Portugal had a much more nice temperature but to find a descent Internet connection was really hard. After staying a few more days I returned to a rainy Sweden. I totally plan to play more live tournaments in the future, but I think I will pass the WSOP this year.

Good luck at the tables, it will be great to play online now again for a while!

Per “Illvillja” Wolf

PokerWorld Pro

 

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