Eric Rizen Lynch

$2.5k PLO today

I played REALLY well in the $1500 NLHE yesterday. Honestly between the $5k at the end of my last trip and the $1500 yesterday I feel like I'm playing some of my best tournament poker so far of the series. My table was pretty good yesterday with from what I could tell, 1 really good player at my table and 1 pretty good player, who were unfortunately both to my left, and the rest of the table was fairly average to soft. I had a really solid read on most of my opponents, and even a couple of sick tells I may talk about later but in case I play with those guys again during the series would rather not talk about now.

At any rate, I splashed around a little early and got down to about 3800 chips, then I had 77 UTG at 50/100 and made it 250, the player to my left made it 550. It folded back around to me and based on my read on him and his previous play I was 99% sure he had AA. So I called. Flop was Kc-Qc-7x and I checked to him. to my surprise he pushed all in (about 2500 chips) and obviously I called. He tabled the AA and I held. Took me up to about 7k. Played a decent sized pot with KQo vs two players on a JT7 board but when the T paired on the turn and both players were still betting it pretty hard I folded after sticking about 1500 chips in the pot pre-flop and on the flop.

A little later a player raised UTG and I re-raised with KK. he pushed all in for about 2k total, obviously I called and he had AK and I held. So I was running pretty well. shortly into the third level someone limped in MP. It was a chronic limper who was pretty loose. He never really folded to isolation raises and tended to call a lot pre-flop. It was 75/150. I had JTo in the CO so I made it 650 really just trying to get heads up with the guy. To my surprise the small blind (an okay player, but kinda loose pre-flop) cold calls, the original limper calls. I hit the jackpot flop of Q-9-8 rainbow. To my surprise the small blind leads for 700. Based on some things I had seen before I was relatively certain he was strong here. The limper called, and I went ahead and made a small raise to 2400 because I didn't think I was going to lose both of them since I though the SB was strong, and the SB and i were deep enough if I just called and the turn was a J or a T I would have a much harder time getting all my chips in the middle. The SB did call and the original limper folded. the turn was a 5 that brought a possible back door flush draw on the board. The SB just open shoved and I obviously called. He tables 99 and in my mind I'm just thinking 'deuce, deuce, deuce' but the river was the Q and he filled up and I was out.

it was a 17k or so pot though, and at that table with 17k chips in level 3 I REALLY like my chances of a deep run in that tournament. If i can keep getting myself in those spots and playing well I'm going to get deep in a few tournaments before this is all said and done with some nice stacks. I was really happy with my play yesterday and look forward to carrying that level of play out throughout the entire trip. if I do i think this is going to be a very profitable trip.

Side note, congratulation and good luck to my friend Scott Clements, who is an O/8 beast!! He's chip leader in the PLO/8 $5k going into the final table today I believe. Take it down Scott!!!

-Rizen