Tourney Report: 2022 Nations Cup Finals, Macedonia

By Lin Ruizi

1. As other team members have covered their experience at the 2023 Asian Nations Cup in Hong Kong quite comprehensively, I’ve decided to take a step back in time and reflect on my experience as part of the squad for the 2022 Nation Cup Finals, which was held in North Macedonia from 24-26 May 2022.

2. I recall the SEA qualifiers being a frustrating experience because I felt we were better positioned than other teams, yet kept falling short. The format (only 1 team qualifying per heat) also incentivised some teams to adopt an extremely maniacal strategy that warped the game – although the IFMP has since introduced a commendable “chip multiplier” component that rewards total chips won and penalizes total chips lost, to disincentivise such strategies. Also, due to COVID-19 and logistics, the qualifiers were played by way of webcam, which was not very fun. All in all it was not a great start to the Match Poker journey – we barely squeaked through in one of the last few qualifiers that I didn’t even play due to personal issues.

3. That initial rough start / impression changed when we got to North Macedonia. It is one thing to conceptualise team strategy and talk about going to the finals. It is another thing entirely to step foot into a country you have never seen before – a country it would not cross your mind to visit if not for the fact that it was host to the Finals – and realise that you are there, representing the nation as part of a team.

4.  North Macedonia was indeed unexpectedly wonderful. Most of the team knew nothing about the country prior to visiting it, save that it was sandwiched by Greece and other Eastern European countries. But the scenery was beautiful, the people were welcoming and the food was great and cheaply priced – we had many hearty home cooked meals e.g huge legs of expertly roasted lamb which cost a fraction of what they would cost in Singapore. It was also interesting that the Finals was held in a small-ish town bordering Greece, where it was big news – there was extensive media coverage of the opening ceremony and team members walking around the town would always be noticed.

5.     On to the (match) poker – our team had many solid players and we were confident in our team strategy. It indeed paid off as we swept through the initial sets of hands on Day 1 and 2 and were always in first or second place. It was a surreal and different experience sitting with opponents in person, as opposed to seeing them over the camera – it felt closer to live cash game poker which I was a lot more familiar with.

6. We were however cautious – it was surprising to us to see Team India (a very tough team from a country with a big internal match poker league) crash and burn early in Day 1. If it could happen to them, it could happen to anyone.

7.  The team aspect of match poker was also on full display, as even those not playing would constantly “spot” and note down hand outcomes to get reads on players of other teams. Such analysis would prove invaluable whenever we did an AAR after each day, allowing us to prepare for our opponents on the next day. As our team member Norbert might say – GTO has nothing on street poker when you have a dead read (but don’t try this at your local game)!

8.  By the time the “swiss rounds” were over, we were very comfortably in 1st place and riding high. Unfortunately, the points would reset for the final 6 teams – which is understandable as they don’t want any one team to run away with a compounded lead.

9.  Unfortunately, the wheels fell off a bit when it came to the final 6. Perhaps we were overconfident – or perhaps negative hidden variance caught up with us. We started in second after the first set of hands, but fell to fourth in the second session. It was however anyone’s game – we were only 10 points behind first place i.e 2-3 good hands by the Team. The comeback did not materialise – in a heartbreaking finale, we ended up 0.4 points behind Kazakhstan in 4th place – 1 different decision and we would have had a podium finish.

10.  Nevertheless, it was a great showing for us and we all had a great experience meeting the other teams and exploring countries that were new to us. The excitement and frantic refreshing of the points whenever things went down to the wire were in retrospect, fun and high adrenaline.

11.  I also really respected the way Team Germany recovered from a disastrous start and clawed into the finals in 6th place, and just calmly employed a solid strategy starting from a strong GTO baseline to eventually take the title.

12.  This year, we fielded a very strong squad at 2023 Asian Nations Cup and again infuriatingly came in 4th, which still qualified us for this year’s finals. I have a good feeling that these finals will be where we buck the trend.