Sorry I’ve been silent for a while – I’ve actually been playing a lot of poker even after my main event bustout, and I have a lot of small losses and one pretty substantial win logged.
The final hand of the main event at the Radisson was a tough one, and I think I misplayed it. I raised with Tens from middle position and got two callers. With two opponents I’m probably giving up on the hand if an overcard hits, which it will most of the time, but in this case the 9-6-3 flop looked pretty damn good. I bet the flop and got one caller, praying for another low card and getting my wish as the three paired on the turn. My opponent checked and I decided that pretty likely holdings for him would be 88 or 77, where he’s not so happy with his hand but has to call the flop in case I just have overcards. If I’m right about what he has, then he only has two outs to beat me on the river, so giving him a free card isn’t too dangerous, and he most likely will see my check behind as weak and bet the river. So I check behind, a harmless deuce lands on the river, and my opponent checks again. Now I think I must be good, but I think 88 or 77 will call a pretty healthy bet, so I bet 7,000,only to get checkraised all-in. I nearly hurl on the table, grudgingly made the call, hoping against hope that he has the lower pair, and unfortunately he had a slightly lower lower pair, 66 for a flopped set of sixes. Yuck. I should have just deemed my pair of Tens as a bluff catcher and then I would have been thanking my lucky stars that he let me get away so cheaply, but he trapped me good, and I fell in head first.
They’re down to the final table today, which they started playing on a stage over the swimming pool, but then a rainstorm blew inn (first real rain we’ve seen all week) and they had to move indoors.
My one bit of good news is pretty good and hopefully will get better tonight … I qualified for the Holiday Inn tournament in one of their weird “qualifying rounds” that are really just satellites in disguise. I already wrote about my mega-satellite win at the Holiday Inn, which awarded me a $1650 seat in one of the qualifying rounds. After busting out of the main event at the Radisson, I decided to check out the action at the Holiday Inn, not knowing whether or not I felt like playing poker well into the morning hours. But looking at the scruffy cast of crazy Venezuelans lining up to play, I just couldn’t resist. (No offense to Venezuelans, and a few of them can play quite well, but there just seems to be a high percentage of maniacs at this cardroom). So I played until 5AM, at which point we were down to 5 players with four of us to get seats in the “finals”, which will happen tonight. I made a deal with an enormous American named Jimmy, who along with me was the short stack, that if either of us busted out, the other would give the loser $500. He is a good player, but I think he made a mistake by letting himself get blinded down too far, while I was occasionally shoving my short stack in and getting the others with safe stacks to fold. He got down so short that he had no fold equity, and after doubling up once, he finally just ran into a race he couldn’t win, and it was over. (I happily paid him the $500, and he ended up winning a seat the next night)
Since then they’ve been running qualifiers every night. They only qualified 4 more players Thursday night, but last night was hopping and they got 12 more, and this afternoon was insane, so they’ll probably get 15-20 more. They’re guaranteeing a $300,000 prize pool, so even if we end up with 40 players, my seat is worth about $7500 (ignoring my massive skill advantage, of course). When I left at 3PM today they still hadn’t started the 2PM qualifier, so I’m not hopeful of the 8PM start time coming even close, nor of getting any sleep tonight. So it’s off to the beach, hopefully for a good afternoon nap, and then some high stakes poker with the crazy Venezuelans ….
Those of you who have been reading my exploits for over a year may remember that I played in this tournament last year as well, and finished 7th for an $8000 prize. Hoping to improve on that this year – this might be one my my best shots ever at taking down a six-digit prize.
-huge
What’s the poker equivalent of ”break a leg”?
Go Huge!