Tourney Follow along with my Ali-like return to the ring (2 Viewers)

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After over a year, I’m finally playing live poker. It’s my first time at the Filotimo casino in NH. The tournament is a 50/50/50 which means you get up to 3 $50 bullets - buy in / rebuy is 15k, if you have a bullet left for addon, that’s 20k. And there’s a $10 staff bonus which gets you an extra 10k. So it’s really a 60/50/50 with 25k starting stacks.
I’ve played this format before (without the extra 10k to start) and found that people play like maniacs, so limping is actually the best strategy for the first 90 min. But with the extra 10k at the start, that might give more flexibility for real play, early on? I don’t know.
I drew a 1 seat, so the luck has begun!
Cards in the air in 30.
85 runners fo far, and I believe that number will go up to maybe 120 or more?
 
What do they offer for cash games and what's the action like? I've never heard of them but I see they're less than an hour drive from Boston. Their website is not helpful in terms of cash game info. Any better or worse than Chaser's?
 
What do they offer for cash games and what's the action like? I've never heard of them but I see they're less than an hour drive from Boston. Their website is not helpful in terms of cash game info. Any better or worse than Chaser's?
I haven’t been here before, but it doesn’t look strong for the cash games based on this:
C0EB269A-4C5D-4F3C-B41A-82C0E9C651F4.png

but there must be at least 10 or 12 tournament tables, so maybe they run more cash games when tournaments aren’t happening?
 
Wow, the action feels crazy fast. I’m up a grand after the first level, but I can’t say much
 
Lots of limping, too much flatting - about what you’d expect for a format like this.
 
Wow, definitely takes getting used to the pace of the game, which is strange since online is much faster. Made it to the break with 22k. At this point I could have s25k rebuy for $50 and a 20k addon for $50. I’m just going to take the addon. My mind says +ev is to just roll with what I have, but I’d like to last a while. So coming back to 600/1200 with 42k. Looks like 115 runners total, so should be a nice prize pool.
 
Big blind ante now. Didn’t see that coming, but I like it.
 
I was down to 30k. One guy flatted, loose splashy guy raised to 5k folded to me in the small. Big blind was away from the table, so there was 10k in the pot. I pushed in with AK. He called me with AQ. Flopped a Queen. No luck for me tonight.

Sorry I could t put on a better thread - I thought I could tell you about some e it if hands, but it was all I could handle to keep up with the game.
 
GG. Hit the cash table!
If they had an Omaha table, I would. But casino cash NLHE is not my thing.
Still, it was tons of fun. And who can argue with a place that draws 115 for a Tuesday night donkfest?
Tables were great, chairs were gassers, and although the plastic chips are dumb, they get points for their oversized 10k. And the level of play was t bad. I’ll be back here often.
 
They should at least have the philotimo (literally, fondness of honor; a rather defensive sense of pride/honor/dignity/duty) to have better chips and to know that the Greek sound F (Φ) is transliterated to Latin and English with PH.

It's an idiomatic expression very hard to translate; pretty much depends on context.
Triggering one's philotimo (if they have some, to start with ) can mean shaming them into doing the right thing.:)

Nice that you enjoyed the game.:)
 
Wow, definitely takes getting used to the pace of the game, which is strange since online is much faster. Made it to the break with 22k. At this point I could have s25k rebuy for $50 and a 20k addon for $50. I’m just going to take the addon. My mind says +ev is to just roll with what I have, but I’d like to last a while. So coming back to 600/1200 with 42k. Looks like 115 runners total, so should be a nice prize pool.

I would recommend taking the 25K rebuy there too. I mean, you paid $50 to get an additional 20k, why not pay the same amount for another 25K on top?

Then you'd be going to 600/1200 with a 67K stack (roughly 56bb) vs just 42K (35bb)

It would give you more tools in your box, increase your chances of survival and allow you to win bigger pots against others who have larger stacks as well.
 
Returning to live poker for a $50 donkament at a random NH casino does not equal an Ali-like return; it’s more like Floyd Mayweather coming out of retirement to fight a YouTube star.

Still enjoyed the thread - sucks that you lost the AK vs. AQ flip.
 
Out of curiosity what was the rake percentage?
They take $11 out of the first $50, but I’m pretty sure that’s it. In my experience with 50/50/50s, the average person puts in about $120, so 11 out of that is great.
Next time I’ll make a deeper run and find out for sure if they’re raking the rebuys and addons.
 
I would recommend taking the 25K rebuy there too. I mean, you paid $50 to get an additional 20k, why not pay the same amount for another 25K on top?

Then you'd be going to 600/1200 with a 67K stack (roughly 56bb) vs just 42K (35bb)

It would give you more tools in your box, increase your chances of survival and allow you to win bigger pots against others who have larger stacks as well.
It was 15k, not 25 - that might make a difference for me.
So your first buy gets you 15k for $50, but for an extra $10, you get an extra 10k - so pretty much everybody starts with 25k for $60.
Then you’ve got two $50 bullets left. You can use them any time for 15k chips. But at the break after level 5, you can use one bullet for a 20k addon, which I did. I could have fired another $50 for another 15k (since i never rebought one the first 5 levels) but I dunno.

At that point the blinds are 600/1200.
I’m very much on the fence as to whether the 20k addon is worth it - $50 for 16.6 bigs. So the other 15k - 12.5 bbs for $50 - I just don’t think it’s a good way to spend your money, especially in a huge field.
I could be wrong, and I’d love to discuss it. Like I said earlier, I believe the average player gets in for about 2.5 bullets, for whatever that’s worth.
 
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Returning to live poker for a $50 donkament at a random NH casino does not equal an Ali-like return; it’s more like Floyd Mayweather coming out of retirement to fight a YouTube star.

Still enjoyed the thread - sucks that you lost the AK vs. AQ flip.
We takes what we can gets. I don’t believe Foxwoods or Mohegan sun are running tournaments at all yet, and freaking encore is still pretending they don’t have a poker room. Puke.
but the NH poker rooms are great - it’s like a game selection thing - the rake is generally about 50% higher, but the skill level of the field is more than 50% lower.
 
I was down to 30k. One guy flatted, loose splashy guy raised to 5k folded to me in the small. Big blind was away from the table, so there was 10k in the pot. I pushed in with AK. He called me with AQ. Flopped a Queen.
Thinking about this again this morning, that was one of those moments.
I'm pretty proud of how I nailed that situation. I was positive my AK was ahead there. I had 19 big blinds, and I'm not the guy who jams whenever he gets below 20 bigs - I'm usually content to get down to 10 before I feel the need to push. But here - this guy had about 60K, so he was calling off half his stack - it should have been a fold that would have increased my stack from 30K to 40K. And he tanked for a good 30 seconds. And I was fine with the call because I should have won and more than doubled up.

It sounds silly to say jamming AK there was a smart move because I think a lot of people would have done the same thing without a thought. But I did put a lot of thought into it and all my thoughts were correct. So I'm proud of the play and poker sad about the result.
 
So would you play there again after this experience? I’m smack dab in the middle of this place and Foxwoods/Mohegan (90 min~). Keeping fingers crossed Encore brings it back.
 
So would you play there again after this experience? I’m smack dab in the middle of this place and Foxwoods/Mohegan (90 min~). Keeping fingers crossed Encore brings it back.
I definitely will, but I love the fun of cheap live poker. I had been going to
Hampton Falls poker room most Wednesday's, to play the same stupid format.
I miss encore too, but I’m not sure it was good for me. I’d started playing their weeknight tournaments, which were higher stakes against better competition. I made some final tables; it’s not like I was totally outclassed. But I’m a winner in NH, so I think that’s where I should be playing.
 

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