HugePoker

I’ve just played my last hand of Aruban poker for 2009. I’ve got tomorrow morning to sit on the beach, then off to the airport. Poker-wise the trip was a mixed-bag – I failed to cash in either of the big events I played, so my two shots at winning buckets of money came up short, but in each case I won my entry into the tournament, so that takes away some of the sting. On the good side, some of the little stuff went my way…

I had good success in the single-table tournaments at the Radisson – I played 8 of them and cashed in 5, with 1 3rd place finish and 4 outright wins. One of those wins involved a comeback from 1.5 big blinds on the bubble, and since I had no 2nd place finishes, that means I was 4-for-4 when I got down to heads-up play.

I played 3 of the $540 events at the Radisson, with a good run in one of them (16th of 95, when they were paying the final 9) and nursing a short stack to the final table in another, finishing 6th for $1560, so basically broke even for the 3 tournaments.

I busted out of the main event at the Radisson late on Day 1, which is a big fat ugly drag. That tournament was the main reason I came here, and it’s very disappointing to go out on Day 1. It was a very rough day for me, but I’ve already posted about the coolers and the coinflip. It was hard, it was sad, I didn’t win a million dollars.

I won my seat into the crazy Holiday Inn tournament on the first try, which is at least a good savings since the qualifiers cost $2500 and I would have played at least one or two more before giving up. I felt good about how I played in the qualifier, and got a chance to chat it up with former world champ and noted poker author Tom McEvoy, who paid me the compliment of saying that he hated having me on his left at the final table (actually he went on to say that “when I’ve got someone like you who’s really aggressive on my left it makes me play better” which I thought was funny since I just don’t think I’m all *that* aggressive, but I enjoyed it all the same, and immediately started thinking about how to exploit my hyper-aggressive image if I got him on my right again in the final event).

I’ve had stupidly good luck playing … umm … blackjack? I don’t really play blackjack since I was in my 20’s when I learned to count cards, got decent enough at it to believe I had an edge and could make some money, at which point it became mind-numbingly dull and I switched to playing poker, which has held my interest a bit better. But I’ll still play blackjack if I can get my hands on some “match play” coupons (OK Dan, go ahead and laugh). A match play coupon adds extra value to an even-money bet at blackjack or roulette or any other table game. You put up $10 in chips and set them on top of your $10 coupon, and if you win you win $20, and if you lose you only lose $10. I’ll let you do the math, but the coupons are worth a little less than $5 each, and if you were to use 100 of them you should expect to end up with a little less than $500. But I don’t have a hundred – you can gather them out of the “Aruba Gourmet” and “Aruba Island Life” and other tourist guide/magazines that can be found all over the place here, and while I guess it would be easy enough to collect a hundred of them, they technically restrict you to one per person per day, though they don’t seem to check … anyway, I think I’ve used about 20 of them, and I’m up $220, over double the expected value of the coupons … pretty damn exciting, eh?! If only I could run that good at poker.

But sometimes I do, just not in the most important moments … two nights ago I flopped bottom 2-pair in a cash game when my opponent flopped the nut straight on a 2-3-6 flop (don’t go hatin’ on me, I was in the big blind). Good money went in on the flop and turn, but all the money went in when a deuce hit on the river giving me a full house. Thanks to that hand and a couple of other beauties I walked away from the game with a $1400 profit. The few other cash games I played were close to a wash, but that session made things OK overall.

The big crazy event at the Holiday Inn was disappointing – especially the final moment. I flopped a set early on to build up some chips, but then got caught bluffing to drop down below my starting stack level. I got back up, then down, and after all this up and down the blinds got up to a dangerous level and I found pocket Queens at just the right time. The player on my right shoved for a few more chips than I had, I happily called, got more happy when he turned over J-9, got a little queasy when the flop came 7-8-9, cringed when the turn brought a Ten, and packed up my bags when the river failed to deliver a Jack. As I posted on my twitter page, I’m pretty sure I had like 80% of the good players in the tournament at my table, which sucked. There are a couple of hands that trouble me because I’m not sure if I mis-played them … perhaps I’ll post them when I get home. But it sucked to bust out like that – if I win the hand with QQ vs J9 I get back to an average stack with 18 players left and 9 getting the good money, with a perfectly viable shot at the $100,000 first prize. As it is I’ll just have to wait for next year.

I’m flying home with more cash than I landed with, but then I landed with a $5500 entry into the main event and that went up in smoke on the big coinflip, so the trip has to be considered a(nother) loss, but with a few bright spots. And sitting on the beach wasn’t too bad.

-huge