Canterbury Trip Report

Friday I took the day off and headed up to Canterbury Park to play in their $300 Fall Classic Event. I've gone up there for one event the last three years now, and I was looking forward to my one live MTT of the year. I'm not sure why I look forward to it, because the structure in these are terrible. You start out with 4000 chips, blind levels are only 40 minutes long, and the first few blinds levels are 25/50, 50/100, 100/200, 100/200 a25, 200/400 a50, 400/800 a100. Heck, by the time the 4th level starts, it's pretty much a pre-flop gambling game.

My starting table was pretty decent for a Canterbury event, but still bad none-the-less. I'd say the level of play in these things matches a $10 online tournament. There were a couple people at my starting table who were friends with Mike Schnieder (Schnieds) of Card Runners (Schnieds is considered one of the best limit players in the world). One of his friends at my table actually won the $200 tournament the day before for 21 grand. But all of them busted out by level 4.

I played pretty much flawless poker, but unfortunately, the cards didn't fall my way. I was pretty much spot on with all of my reads. The funny thing was that I was able to validate my reads, because everyone at my table loved to show their cards. Be it a bluff (Not many) or a strong made hand, these idiots would always show, lol.

Anyways, I hovered around the starting stack for the first 2 levels. In level 3 (100/200), I was down to about 3500 in chips, and 3-bet a looser player with JJ. I had him covered just barely, and he called with AKdd. The flop was all diamonds, and he flopped the nuts on me. So I'm down to 600 chips, and the next hand it folds to me in the SB. I look down and see the hammer and push em in. BB calls with AQ, but I river a 7 to win the 40/60. A few hands later I call an all-in from another shortie and double up with KQs vs JT and I get back up to the 3500 range.

After the first break, and into level 4 (100/200 a25), I find pocket Tens and 3-bet all-in for 3000 chips the same guy as my JJ hand. This time though, the guy directly behind me calls. And then the old dude in seat 10 calls too and the original raiser folds. The flop comes a perfect T84, and the other two guys get it in. Player directly behind me has AA, and old dude has 88. LOL. So I survive and triple up and now have a stack to play with.

Nothing too exciting happened the rest of level 4 (200/400 a50) and dwindled down to around 6500 in chips. Near the beginning of level 5, it folds to me in the SB and I find TT again. I raise it up, and the BB pushes his 5000 stack in. I call and he shows A9. Flop is 67x. Turn is an 8 and river is a 5 for the runner runner straight, and I'm down to 1500 in chips. Hooray. A few hands later It folds to me in late position and I push with K7s and get called by TT. Flop is a beautiful KJ7 and I flop two pair. Turn is a Ace. And yep, you guessed it, river is a Queen giving him runner-runner straight.

I didn't win one hand when I had the other guy covered. How pathetic is that.

And one more bad beat to share. When I got to Canterbury, I noticed some sweet smelling white smoke coming from under my hood. I was leaking anti-freeze, so instead of hanging around and playing cash games after I busted, I had to go spend 3+ hours waiting at a Ford dealership so they could fix my car so I could make the 90 mile trek back home.

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Online results sucked this weekend. I still won a few bucks, but I was way off in all-in EV. Every damn draw was hitting against me. Oh well, I suppose that if I am going to run like crap, it's still nice to come out with a small profit.

Cheers!