Iron Man - Me vs. The Pros

I scraped into the Bronze Iron Man freeroll last month. Not only did I end up winning that, I won the heads-up double shootout that followed and the following week I was scheduled to play three members of Team Full Tilt for a possible $50K. This is my take on what happened next.

Match 1 vs Clonie Gowen

While I wouldn’t say the deck was cold for me, it was definitely on the cool side! A distinct dearth of face cards over the 59 hands it lasted made it difficult to get any traction. A host of railbirds (someone used the term “railtards” which I thought apt) bombarded the chat box with a series of marriage proposals, none directed at me.

Given that I was seeing rather a lot of 10-2 type hands, I was restricted to looking for either innocuous or very scary flops on which I could represent. I folded a couple of particularly bad hands in the hope that I could create the notion that I could be pushed off pots and hence set up a trap. It might have worked except that she decided to fold preflop when I held KK!

I was gradually bleeding chips and a bit below 700 when I got 33 and insta-pushed, being prepared to take a coinflip for a chance to double up and get some leverage (I think the blinds had just gone to 50/100). I don’t think she had to think much about calling with KK and that was that.

Match 2 - Paul Wolfe

If the deck had been cold before, it warmed up pretty quick 15 minutes later! The whole thing took about 5 minutes. I trapped him for about half his stack when I hit two pair with J5, then took the rest when I flopped a set with 77 and he had 87 for 2-pair. He did have some outs for a straight but they didn’t appear and that was $5000 in the bank.

Match 3 - Erik Seidel

Again, not a lot of cards, although I think I was briefly ahead, then tried to push him off a pot with nothing, got reraised and had to let it go. With about 1300 of my initial 1500 stack and already feeling frazzled (don’t know why, he’s only got 7 WSOP bracelets after all) I picked up AJ. Vaguely recalling my review of HoH II earlier in the day I decided that this was likely to be as good as it got and re-reraised when he bumped my preflop raise. Deciding he was restealing, I bumped it again, realised I’d just bet 750 and left 450 behind (and should have pushed) and then did so with the horrid realisation that I was probably stuffed when he put me all-in. I don’t think AA counts as a resteal, somehow! The board gave just as much help as you’d expect.

I think the match vs Clonie was actually the only interesting one: I thought I played it well without much ammunition. The Wolfe one was straightforward: I got the cards, the flop hit me harder than it hit him and we were done in no time - I can’t see what he could have done. Erik did to me what Clonie had: got a monster when I had a strong heads-up hand and I wasn’t good or lucky enough to dodge. But since I did the same to Paul I’ve no complaints. Nor should I: $11,800 for the 8 days from Saturday to Saturday constitute slightly more than a doubling of my “career” earnings from the last two years.

The whole hour-and-a-quarter was a blast from start to finish. I’d happily do it again next month - I ought to be able to go Silver this time.