I'm writing this from the ****½ star SwissHotel Tallinn, Estonia. This is one of my favourite hotels on the circuit, it only costs 120 euros a night and it's actually pretty posh. It's not the kind of a super luxury hotel where they polish your shoes while you eat breakfast, but it has large rooms with very comfortable beds, the standard spas and gyms and a lot of extra pampering like masseuses, and a menu of 9 different pillows to choose from to ensure your neck won't be aching in the morning. When it comes to price/luxury ratio, the SwissHotel is one of the best in northern Europe.

I played the Betfair Open main event on friday. I managed to get knocked out after 1,5 hour of play, which I believe is my fastest exit ever in a live tournament. The event had 10k starting stacks and it was filled with good scandinavian players. Over 50% of the player pool were Finns, and I was delighted to see myself drawn to a table full of Russian businessmen who open limped or opened 6-8x. I only recognized one player in the line-up. The table was pretty nitty, so in the first level I played like 30% of hands and managed to build my stack a little. On the second level I only played a couple of small pots until I managed to push my stack in completely dead. I think it was quite standard and I couldn't have played it much better, but feel free to disagree:

I have the most active image in the table, but haven't played much post-flop. Villain is a 20-something internet player-looking local guy, but as a generalization I think estonians are pretty bad at poker. He's been playing a couple of big pots, once he check-raise bluffed on a semi blank flop and gave up on the turn. In the other one he barreled 3 streets in a 3-way pot on JT922 board but didn't have to show his hand. He has been calling too much pre (although I haven't seen any of his hands, but that's assuming he's not running insanely hot), and hasn't 3-bet once even that he's had really good spots to do it. His raise sizes and post flop sizes have been consistent, so I assume he understands odds and stuff like that. If I had to guess, he's probably a NL50 or NL100 regular or something. In other words, a player who has some idea of what he's doing, but is not super intelligent or anything. The only hand between us before the fatal was when I opened BTN for 300, he flatted from SB as did the BB. I c-bet a king high flop, he flatted and the BB fold. The turn went check-check, and on the river he bet half pot and I folded. In his eyes I'm probably an aggro, bluffy internet player.

Folded to me in the CO, I make it 300 with JT. Villain calls on the BTN. Blinds fold.

Flop Q97 (750)

I bet 450, Villain thinks for 10 seconds and calls.

Turn 8 (1650)

I check, Villain bets 1200, I raise to 3450 with all my chump change, leaving exactly 6k behind. He asks "how much do you have behind?", and I tell him. He tanks for a while and calls.

River K (8550) I tank for 30 seconds and sigh-shove for 6k. He slowrolls for 15 seconds and calls with the A5.

Is there anything I can do? We'd only played for 1,5 hours and I had only the reads mentioned above. Also thoughts on the line in general and sizing are appreciated.Just to make sure, let's break this hand into pieces:

Pre-flop: Standard unless you're a nit.

Flop: Standard unless you want to get out of line with a check-raise semi-bluff.

Turn: Well, I guess it would be somewhat standard to just barrel this. Against a regular in the internet I'd probably do it for balancing purposes, but I think I can use a more manipulative play here. I don't think I'm ever doing check-raise this turn with pretty much anything but the nuts, but he can't know that. I feel that he's going to have a lot draws (both flush draws and KJ type stuff) that he's now going to have to bet after floating the flop. Against some villains a bet-bet-bet line would be better, as they'd always check their made hands behind OTT and not float light OTF, but with the little reads I had I felt that most of his flop floating range is going to bet this turn, so I felt checking was superior. When he did bet, I could've raised a little bigger, maybe to 3600 or so. However, I wanted to give him a chance to call with a hand like QJ or QT, that (in his eyes) has both showdown value and nut outs.

River: Well, there is 8550 in the pot and I have 6000 behind. If I check, he's going to check back every single hand that I beat. He's only going to bet a flush, and possibly some bluffs. But since I can't have a flush after my check, he can easily turn any made hand into a bluff. If I think he's rarely going to bluff the river, I could maybe just check-fold. The downside of checking is that I miss a ton of value against a lot of hands that I beat. So, with my image of a bluffy internet player I went for thin value and shoved.

I've been really ill all weekend, so I haven't gone partying or done anything in particular apart from chilling at the hotel. I also haven't played a hand of online poker since thursday, and I'm going to skip all the sunday tournaments today too, and get back on the grind tomorrow at the earliest. As I wrote in my last entry, this is the first break I've taken in four months, and it feels pretty good. On thursday when I last played online I had a great night winning 6k. I hit two final tables, and narrowly missed one as I lost with 99 to 33 with 10 or 11 players left in a $33 tournament. My two final tables were pretty huge (for me, anyway): the Ongame $54 shorthanded deepstack which is a GREAT tournament, and the biggest nightly tournament in the Microgaming network, the 25€ rebuy. I'd final tabled both of these before, but never finished in the top three. This time I finished 4th at Ongame for 1,2k and 2nd at Microgaming for 3,6k€ (4,8k$). Of course I gave my lucky friend E 50% of my action since we were grinding at his place, so the lucky fucker got a free 3k. Like he needs it with his 349502354943k net worth.

Alright, I think that's all I have right now. There's a side event at the casino tonight, but as I'm still sick I'm going to skip it and instead head to the hotel's spa for a sauna and possibly a massage.