HugePoker

In my last post I mentioned a “Step 5” tournament win as a secondary note to my nice cash score. That Step 5 victory yielded a Step 6 ticket worth $2100, and I wasn’t quite sure when I was likely to use it, since the only Step 6 tournaments running at the time were satellites into a tournament in Uruguay. Well, sometime in the last couple of days they started running Step 6 tournaments awarding entry into a $5000 North American Poker Tour event at the Venetian in Las Vegas, which seemed a little more manageable than Uruguay. Yesterday around noon I saw one with 4 people signed up (the tournament starts when they get 9, and sometimes for a step 6 it takes a long time to get 9), three of whom I knew to be weak players. So I keep my eye on it to see if it would fill up and who else might sign up, but unfortunately three players unregister and it’s down to one very weak player sitting there all alone in the lobby waiting for 8 more to sign up. I kind of gave up on it but I left the lobby open on my screen. A few hours later I noticed that it had attracted some more players – now there were 6 people signed up, including the original sad lonely weak player, plus one unknown, two more players who looked weak from their online records, and two superstars – players who routinely play in the Step 5 & 6 tournaments, trying to win multiple entries into the big land-based tournaments (If you win more than one entry you get tournament-cash for each subsequent win). I didn’t like having the two stars in there, but they’re hard to avoid in the Step 6’s, and having three weak-looking players in a Step 6 is always a good prospect, so I signed up as number 7 on the list. Also, because the superstars are generally playing a lot of tables at once, I generally think I can take advantage of them early in the tournament when they’re playing conservatively and predictably – I tend to think of their blinds as a free lunch. We got one more weak player and one more superstar to round out the nine-handed table and we were ready to go.

So, 9 players, 1st and 2nd would get $7000 prize packages including a $5000 buyin to the NAPT event, $1110 in cash, and a hotel room at the Venetian (very questionable whether the hotel room is worth $890 for 4 or 5 nights – I’ll see if I can just take the cash … oh did I just give away the ending? sorry). 3rd and 4th would get $2000, basically getting the value of their entry back in cash, but since most of us won our way up from a lower step, not a terrible result.

The first half hour saw my stack go up a bit at the start and then back down around the 3000 I started with … meanwhile the three superstars were having more exciting times: one of them had dropped half his stack on a coinflip, and the other two had tangled with each other when they each rivered straights but only one had the nut straight, leaving the loser with only a few hundred chips. With JJ in the big blind I found myself in a pot with only the two wounded demi-gods, and I would have been out of position against the one who still had half his stack, so my path was obvious … I jammed it in and was unhappy to see them both insta-call, but slightly relieved to see AK and A5, so I was in an unusually good coinflip position (the usual 55% to win with a pair vs overcards, but more than the usual amount of money in the pot to be won) and my Jacks held on to knock out two of my most dangerous foes.

On my next big blind I picked up QQ (very nice to get big hands on the big blind) and picked up a nice pot after a raiser and a caller quickly folded to my reraise. We drifted along 7-handed until a massive 3-way hand with KK vs QQ vs 33 – no surprises on the board and the QQ and 33 players were gone, leaving us on the first bubble, and leaving the original weak player (who had been my original impetus for looking at the game to begin with) sitting on a massive mound of chips after waking up with KK at the very right time. I was second in chips but the remaining superstar was right behind me, and the other two weak players were pretty far behind, so I was in good shape to at least get my $2000 cash out of the deal, but I needed to be careful not to put too much of my stack at risk.

I held my own through the first bubble and even increased my lead on the Superstar a bit, until the short stacks finally mixed it up with each other and the shorter one busted out on the bubble, so we were all getting $2000 and could focus on the top prize. The chipstacks were roughly 11k for the Donkey, 7k Huge, 6k Superstar and 3k Other Donkey, and only 2 of us would get seats … so a pretty interesting bubble dynamic existed, and I thought I might be better able to exploit it than the others at the table – even the online superstar I felt was not really playing correctly for a bubble situation, so I liked my chances. But maybe that was a touch of hubris, as I quickly gave up the 2nd place spot and drifted down to 5000 chips, watching the 2nd donkey bust out to the Superstar so that now it looked like: Superstar 11k, Donkey 10k, and I’m-so-smug Huge with a sad 5400. On the one hand this is pretty bad news, but in some strange tactical irony I’m in a great spot to pick up chips, because neither of them should ever want to call me – they each want the other one to tangle with me, but for one of them to double me up and lose half their chips would be a compelte catastrophe, so they need to be super careful. I only get a few hands to work with this dynamic until I pick up 88 on the big blind with the Donkey raising into me – I happily shove and he instantly calls, and I think I must be dead, but he turns over AK, which is actually a pretty terrible call for him – sure it’s better than whatever hand I’m likely to have, but the consequences of losing for him are so terrible that he just shouldn’t risk it. So we’ve got a straightforward garden-variety coinflip this time: if I lose it I’m done and if I win it I trade places with the Donkey for the catbird seat. The board brings nothing higher than a Jack and I double up.

We all trade small rabbit-punches for a while, with me definitely getting the best of things, whittling down the Donkey and putting some distance between my stack and the Superstar’s. I think the Superstar was just a little impatient – he seemed too willing to get his chips in when he should just be laying back waiting for a great spot or for me to knock out the Donkey, and when the Donkey limped his button and the Superstar made a small raise, I smelled trouble and folded my trashy BB hand quickly, praying for fireworks. The Donkey reraised and the Superstar re-reraised and the Donley came back over the top for all his chips, and the Superstar called. I really thought they must both have monsters, and hoped that the Superstar’s was better, but I was disappointed to see Donkey KK (no surprise), Superstar A9s (REALLY??) … oh well, I guess they’ll trade places now and we’ll have to try to knock out the Superstar … but wait … first card on the flop is an Ace, and it holds, and it’s all over. The Donkey had played badly all along but in the end got his money in great and just got unlucky. The Superstar tried as hard as he could to throw the $7000 package away, but the poker gods wouldn’t let him. And Huge, by the grace of a couple of crucial coinflips and some careful choices, will be playing in the North American Poker Tour main event on February 20 at the Venetian Casino in Las Vegas. I’m not sure if there will be any of the usual Team Huge gang there, so if any unusual team members want to hang out in Vegas and rail me, hop on a plane…

-huge

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