SE Betdaq Bubble

Rob & I both played the Betdaq Live Sat in the SE. Rob had won his €400 + €40 ticket in a sat the night before and we bought my ticket off Ian who had also won a ticket in the same sat but was unable to actually play the event.

There were a lot of good players in this sat, so to win 1 of 3 tickets was never going to be easy. My first table featured Donal Norton, Dennis Reyes and Kevin Farelly so it was never really quiet, even early on there were several raised pots preflop. From memory I had very little cards to see a flop with and pathetically managed to blind myself down to around 4k by the break. Great! Just in time for the break time questions . . .
"How are you getting on?"
"About 4"
"40? no way!"
"No, 4, well 4ish "
"Oh"
Like these questions weren't awkward!


Well as my friends were all going well I was on a mission after the break . . . and so I did. I managed to double up a couple of times soon after the break and at least give myself some breathing space. It wasn't long before we were down to 2 tables when fortunately I had 2 keys hands that held up. Firstly I had raised with 5s6s on the button and got one caller in the blinds. Anyway the flop came all spades Q high and I shipped, my caller dwelled for what seemed like an eternity and finally called with KQ, with the king of spades. Thankfully no more spades for him and I doubled up. Not 10 mins later I find myself AIPF and called again with AK and thankfully again I manage to hit! This put me in 3rd position at the end of the first day with 10 players remaining. As the plan was to play down to 9 being the final table it was decided that all 10 would come back for the final table the following day.

First hand on the FT I'm UTG+1 and look down at AQ. Kevin Farrelly to my right (UTG) ships for about half my stack and I hate the spot I'm in. I know I'm ahead of his range but why did I have to be sitting in this seat. After 20 secs or so I fold knowing that calling would be madness with the entire table left to act, there would have to be better spots to move later. So I fold and Troy immediately to my left then shoves and the rest of the table fold, Kevin tabling TT and Troy QQ. Phew, good fold my me . . . oh no wait . . . is that an A on the flop . . . crap another A on the turn . . . feck it . . . that's not a good sign (and so it proved).

From there on in it was always going to be a case of survival. Troy happily took on the shorties as they shoved and managed to suck out at least twice sending folk on their way. I had 99 once and managed to double up but due to a few missing blind levels I was always under pressure. I was shoving every late position I could with absolute junk and managed to get away with it for ages, especially on the bubble were I managed to get away with shoving light for about 3 hours! Basically I ended up shoving one time too many when I shoved my A5 on the SB into Troy's BB when he woke up with QQ, no A this time and the bubble had burst.

Happy enough with my play in the end, just sick that it effectively came to nothing and it was a huge bubble with the seat working out at €8.3k as it was a €75k prize pool! Well done to the fellas that won the seats, all going on to claim €6k+ due to the deal that was done on the night and in particular well done to Troy who went on to win the final for €15k and a €550 SE Winter Festival main event ticket.