HugePoker

We’ve had a lovely 5 days in Nice (France) and 2 days in San Remo (Italy). I haven’t had time to write a blog entry, but it’s all been great, except for playing two satellites here and failing to win a seat into the main event. But I bought in with cash today (5300 Euros, about $7,000) and I’ll be playing tomorrow at noon. They had 585 players today for day 1A, and my day 1B will probably be a little bigger - so probably over 1200 players total.

We found out today that Chad and Vanessa are staying in the apartment next to ours (as in, we can bang on the wall if their TV is too loud). Chad played today and had three nasty coolers to bust out mid-day, and Vanessa will be playing with me on day 1B. We had a very nice dinner with them tonight at which we managed not to bore Rachel *too* much by talking about poker-poker-poker.

So if you’re up at 3AM west coast time (more like 3:30 because everything starts late here), say a little poker prayer for me. I don’t think I’ll have wifi access, so I’ll probably have to just post a report at the end of the day. There will be live coverage on the pokerstars blog, which I can’t get to because I get diverted to the Italian language version, so I can’t post a link. Maybe pokerpages has coverage too. If one of you is industrious enough to find it, perhaps you can post it in a comment here.

[edit: pokernews live coverage will be HERE]

we found the best gelato in Nice - still searching in San Remo…

ciao
-huge

[special note to my Seattle readers: my last post, from a few minutes ago, will be a time-sensitive announcement of a fundraiser poker tournament that I'm running tomorrow night, so if you might be interested make sure you read that]

I meant to write a post-mortem on my NAPT Venetian trip sooner than this, but by the time I left Vegas I was, in addition to being sick of the rotten luck I was having, also physically sick (with just the usual crud that’s going around). Here’s the post-mortem: nothing got any better. OK, that’s not entirely true … since my last report I didn’t have Aces cracked any more, and in fact I cracked other people’s Aces in two different tournaments, so I guess that’s a little better. In one of those, my last tournament at the Venetian, I put together a good run, ending up near the bubble with Chris Moneymaker on my left and Shawn Rice on his left (a pretty crappy position for me to be in, unless I caught some cards to trap Moneymaker with, which I never really did) … but in the end I fell short again. In my final day of poker for the trip I played a couple of single-table tournaments at the Wynn, and actually won the first one – my first and only cash of the entire trip. I put together another good run in the nightly Wynn tournament, and once again managed to crack someone else’s Aces, but once again busted out short of the cash – I think I busted out on some sort of nasty bad beat, but it wasn’t Aces and after the whole string of beats prior to that I don’t even remember the details.

To top it all off I bubbled *BOTH* first-class upgrade waiting lists on the flight back to Seattle – on both flights I was third in line for an upgrade and the first two people on the lists got first-class upgrades and I had to slum it in coach (yeah it was an exit row with extra leg room and all, but I really could have used the free drinks, AND on the second leg I had the largest human I have ever sat next to on a plane sitting in the middle seat, which meant that my back and shoulder were completely twisted and sore by the end of the flight from trying to avoid being crushed by him). For those of you who wonder what the hell I’m talking about when I say that I just “bubbled” a poker tournament – this upgrade list story is a pretty good non-poker parallel (without the extra-large human in the middle seat, though I guess that’s like the agony of bubbling a tournament).

So playing poker at the faux-Italian Venetian tournaments went about as badly as they possibly could have … but … I’m headed for the *actual* Italian Riviera next month to play in the European Poker Tour event at San Remo! I haven’t won a seat into the main event yet, and I guess it remains to be seen whether I would play the main event if I don’t win a seat (it’s a 7200 Euro buyin, so a hefty price tag), but many people talk about this being one of the weakest fields on the EPT trail, so I really hope I get to play the main event, and there are several smaller buyin events I can play in addition to the main. But I will be doing my best to win a seat in the next two weeks, so cross fingers for that. Rachel has some time off so she can join me for this trip (yay!) and we should get to do a little traveling for a few days on either side of the poker tournaments. If anyone has any favorite spots in or near the French/Italian Riviera let me know. We’ll be there from April 8 to April 29 … if you’ll be in the neighborhood, let me know that too.

In my last attempt to win a San Remo seat online, I had Aces cracked by Queens in a massive pot, so the badness continues playing online, but not quite so relentlessly. There’ve been some good results too … nothing significant enough to blog or crow about, but the onslaught of bad beats has at least diminished somewhat since returning from the Venetian.

In non-poker news … I’ve just landed two upcoming acting projects. The first is a very short piece that’s part of Stone Soup Theatre’s original playwright’s festival in mid-May – I’ll let you know more about that when I have the exact schedule. The second one is a bigger deal, and has been a long time coming (over a decade germinating in the fertile – some might say fecund & marshy – brain of Your Old Pal Dan, in fact). Dan had an idea back in the late 90’s to create and direct a play about a group of would-be bank-robbers who almost pulled off the 2nd biggest cash robbery in U.S. history until they got hilariously stupid and got caught. Two years ago when we were all at the World Series of Poker sitting at the pool at Bellagio, Dan brought up the idea as something that Rachel should write the script for and Deb and I should act in … and the idea caught hold. Rachel has indeed written a script, and we’ve had a couple of readings, but we were beginning to despair of ever being able to produce it, until a spot opened up in Annex Theatre’s fall schedule, and they chose us to fill it! We’re all pretty excited about that, and of course I’ll publish more details as things develop, but the performance dates should fall some time in October and November.

This means that I now have my year much more mapped out than is normal for me, bouncing from European Poker Tour to Stone Soup Theatre to World Series of Poker to perhaps a bit of a breather to Annex Theatre’s world premiere production of Rachel Atkins’ & director Dan Morris’ soon-to-be-given-a-new-title “Heist!” (for which I will probably have to pass up on my annual poker pilgrimage to Aruba – just one of the sacrifices one has to make as an artist I guess, sigh) to the Virgin Islands to our New Year’s Eve party and 2011. Those of you who know me know how freaky that is for me to have more than one thing scheduled more than a week in advance. Yikes. Next thing you know I’ll be getting a job or something insane like that. Maybe not.

-huge

Sorry for the late notice, but … I will be the tournament director for another fundraiser for the Nebunele theatre company tomorrow (Friday March 19), and most of Team Huge will make up the dealer staff. This will be the third year we’ve run a tournament for them, and it has always been a lot of fun (can you say “scantily-clad massage/rebuy-babes”?). If you can make it tomorrow, even if you just want to come and watch to see what all this poker tournament stuff is like up close, please come and support a good cause. Here are the event details:

It’s that time again. Get out your flapper duds, ’cause on Friday, March 19, Nebunele will be holding its 3rd Annual Poker Party Fundraiser!

Once more at the excellent, jewelicious, hidden-away Beacon Hill Arts Center. World-class poker pro Laurence Hughes is once again at the helm for a night of tournament thrills and spills; and if you’re not so much for the heart-pounding adrenaline of pushing your stack of chips into the middle of the table and holding your breath, you can come for the cocktails, the music, the party, and the good time in fine clothes.

All proceeds will benefit Nebunele Theatre’s brand-spankin’-new collaborative theatre project: Friend’s Enemy. If you liked Cussing at the Moon, please come out to help us make the next crazy, exciting, whatever-it-is theatre experiment. Be one of the people who makes the art happen and some of the first to know what it’s gonna be. We will, as usual, love you forever.

The poker tournament will be No-Limit Texas Hold’Em (just like you see on TV), with a $20 entry fee and unlimited (optional) rebuys for the first hour. Never played poker but wanna try? We <3 beginners! There will be a rules and strategy tutorial before the tournament starts – be sure to get there by 7:30 if you want to join the tutorial.

Friday, March 19
Party starts at 7:00pm
Lesson/strategy session 7:30
Tournament play begins at 8:00

Arts on Beacon Hill
4951 13th Ave. S. (corner of 13th & Shelton)
Seattle, WA 98108

Party entry is FREE!
Donations toward the bar are appreciated (and also benefit Nebunele)
Come looking good! Extra bonus points (and some extra attention from a sexy Massage Babe) if you come dressed in your 1920’s Gangster best.
This party is a private party. You are part of the special in-crowd who gets invited to our more exclusive events. Please *do* spread the word to all your personal friends who are over 21 and will enjoy this, and please *don’t* forward to public lists.

I had a slow & frustrating (but not terrible) start to my NAPT main event yesterday, winning a small pot here, losing one there, never getting involved in anything massive, never picking up any big hands. I actually was dealt AA in the first few hands of the tournament, but everyone folded to my raise - at least I didn’t get them cracked this time. I felt like I landed at a tough table - a couple of players seemed a little tight or timid, but no-one seemed terribly weak, and there were clearly some big-buyin tournament regulars sitting around me. From a starting stack of 30,000 I drifted down as low as 23,000 … lost a decent-sized pot making a hero-call with bottom pair when a player made a runner-runner flush against me and I was pretty sure he either hit the flush or had absolutely nothing. But I ground back up to 26,000 by taking pots with C-bets or one nice flat-call/float-the-flop/bluff-the-turn maneuver. But I mostly just never had any strong hands or great opportunities.

The first real excitement came after about 5 hours of play, when I looked down at QQ in early position and threw out a standard opening raise. The guy to my left (clearly a pro, though I didn’t know who he was - pokerstars reporters kept coming over and asking him for his chip count) called, the button called, and the tight older guy in the BB called. Great - 4-way action with QQ - not exactly what I was looking for … but when the flop came Q-J-8 with two spades, I thought I was probably in pretty good shape. With 3 opponents though, and that scary board, there’s nothing tricky to be done here - I just have to play it hard and hope no-one sucks out on me. The big blind actually led into me for 2,000 (blinds were 150-300 with 25 chip ante, and I had raised to 800, so there was 3400 in the pot after the preflop action) which seemed like a very odd play if he actually had flopped the straight (the only hand beating me) … but he was pretty conservative so I had to think he had a hand he liked and wanted to protect it against all the possible draws. My dream scenario would have him with a lower set with JJ or 88, either of which seem to be right in his range, or top-two with QJs. In any case, no time for pussyfooting around - I raise to 5500. The guy on my left thinks for a while and then shoves for 30,000, a bit more than my stack. The button thinks forever and finally folds, and the big blind folds quickly. The pro on my left had overbet-raised the pot at least 4 times before, and seemed to love making big raises to capture fold equity, twice in pretty marginal situations. I felt like there were a lot of hands he could be doing that with - obviously he might have the nuts (9-10 for the straight), but he could have a bunch of other hands, some of them big combo draws like Aks, Ajs, Ats, J9s - any of which would leave me either flipping a coin or decently ahead, or *HE* could have the lower set or top-two-pair, in which case I would be in fabulous shape. So there’s just no way I can even consider folding. I call and he has the best hand he could possibly have without having the straight - Ace-Ten-spades for the nut-flush draw and a double-gutshot straight draw. He needs any spade (other than a Jack) or a Nine or a King to beat me, but even if he sucks out on the turn, any pair on the board and I would turn the tables on him with a full house. The player on the button reports that he folded Ks-Js, good news for me since it removes one of my opponent’s flush outs. So I’m a 60:40 favorite to double up and escalate to a well-above average stack for the first time in the tournament.

Six of spades on the turn. Flush for him. Sadness for me.

But I still have hope - the case Queen, any Jack, any Eight, any Six on the river and my full house pulls me out of the fire.

Three of hearts on the river and I’m busted in the middle of day one, top set cracked to put an exclamation point on the string of Aces-cracked hands that had defined this trip until now.

I was pretty grumpy, but Rachel is here to cheer me up. I took the day off from poker today, and we’re headed for the V-bar for happy hour in a few minutes and then Bouchon for a nice dinner. Will probably return to the regular Venetian $350 tournament tomorrow and see if I can avoid having any monsters smashed. I have yet to (A) win a coin flip, or (B) put a bad beat on anyone, or (C) get anywhere near cashing in a tournament on this trip. And I have been getting my money in as substantial favorites in every tournament so far … pretty depressing, but as they say (“they” being really annoying cliché-spouting poker idiots) … “That’s POKER!”.

-SadHuge, aka Luckbox Larry MY ASS

Yes, Aces cracked again … This time in the first ten minutes of yesterday’s $350 Deep Stack event … by the mighty Eight-Five-Suited. It didn’t knock me out of the tournament, but it cost me half my stack right at the start, and I never really recovered.

Last night in the little $120 “Second Chance” tournament, I finally played a tournament in which I DIDN’T get Aces cracked (yay!), but after the blinds were pretty high and my stack was getting a bit short I got all-in preflop with AQ vs. Q9, and found not one but two nines on the flop to cripple me.

In today’s $200-rebuy satellite for the NAPT main event (270 players, the final 26 would win $5000 in tournament chips for a main event buyin), I was blessed with a surplus of premium starting hands, but with AA (twice) and KK and QQ I got no action to my raises (during the rebuy period no less - blecch) and with AK (thrice) I got more action than I wanted, missed the flop each time and had to fold. And then after the rebuy period was over AK was my betrayer again, with the blinds high and my stack short I was facing a shove from another short stack, looked down at AK and happily called - things looked OK when the other guy turned over QTs, but not so great when a Ten hit the flop and the turn and river bricked away.

So I’m running like crap, and the main event starts at Noon tomorrow. Hopefully the badness is out of the way - maybe I’ll even put a bad beat on someone else for a change. I’ll let you know.

I’ll try to post updates on my twitter page so you can follow along. I’m guessing there will be updates on the famous pros on the Pokerstars blog page, and maybe elsewhere, but I’ll worry about posting those links if I make it to day 2.

-huge

P.S. For those of you with money invested in my poker tournament forays, I’m sorry I haven’t sent you detailed account statements recently. I don’t have my investors’ email list with me here, so I’m hoping most of you will be reading this. As you know, the last few big buyin tournaments have not gone well for me, so whatever your balance was before, it’s … umm … a lot less now. My plan is to take half of the remaining pool and invest it in tomorrow’s main event, saving the remaining half for the next one (possibly the European Poker Tour event in San Remo Italy in April). Your money has not been in play for the preliminary events, which is a good thing for you, but half of it will be riding on me tomorrow, do or die.

I’ve been in Vegas for a day and a half, played in two of the Venetian “Deep Stack Extravaganza” events, both $350 buyins. The good news is that I’ve been dealt pocket Aces more than my share, which seems only appropriate given that today is my birthday. The bad news is that out of the four pairs of Aces I’ve been dealt, I’ve stolen the blinds once (always a mildly sad result with Aces) , chopped a big pot against Ace-Queen-offsuit (almost the best possible matchup I could have in all of poker) when we both rivered 5-high straights, and lost two massive pots against 66 and KQ-offsuit, in both cases with my opponent calling my large re-raise out of position and then either calling my bets on flop and turn with a gutshot (with the 66) or check raising me all-in on the flop with top pair (with the KQ) and then sucking out on me on the river. The first one was yesterday, and I recovered from that near-death blow to build up my stack again and then ran into the same guy when I flopped top-two-pair with KQ and he called me (AGAIN) on the flop and turn (with AJ this time) with a gutshot, and then (AGAIN) sucked out on me on the river. The second hand was today, my ACTUAL birthday, in which the guy raised with KQ, called my reraise out of position, and then check-raised me all-in for about 70BB on the Queen-high flop, only to catch his King on the river for two pair. I had built up my stack somewhat so I was well above average, but he had even more chips so I was out.

In about six hours of play over two tournaments I’ve been in all-in confrontations six times, I’ve been the overwhelming favorite all six times, I’ve won two, chopped one (when I was a 9:1 favorite to win) and lost the other three. I don’t think I’ve ever had this bad of a string of results with pocket Aces. Happy Borthday My ASS.

After I post this I’m changing my clothes and going out to birthday dinner at Pamplemousse with Mark and Vanessa and a few other friends, so at least I can’t have any more Aces cracked on my birthday - I don’t even want to think about what would be the non-poker dinner equivalent - maybe having the restaurant comp me to some foie gras and caviar and catching botulism.

The $5000 main event of the NAPT is Saturday … I’m just expelling all my bad luck before then, right?

-huge

After my last whiny post about all the bad beats I’ve been taking lately, I feel honor-bound to publish the following. This was in a $700 buy-in Step 5 tournament, in which the top 2 finishers get $2100 Step 6 tickets, 3rd and 4th get their $700 Step 5 tickets back, and 5th and 6th get downsized to a $215 Step 4 ticket. There were seven players when this hand came up, so if I lose the hand I walk away with nothing but a hole in my pocket where $700 used to be.

I was recording the tournament, so you’re watching and hearing it as it happened, just a few minutes ago…

Luckbox Larry eats top set for breakfast

As some of you may recall, Ace-Ten vs Queens was my fateful matchup against Dmitri Nobles in the 2006 WSOP. If the cards had fallen this way with the ESPN cameras rolling my life might be very different now … “Carry your OWN damn self out on a stretcher, you cocky little piss ant!”

Back to reality, I went on from there to capture the chip lead, but sadly lost a big coinflip with the mighty deuces against some other bastard’s Ace-Ten (how can he play that crap?) and finished fourth to break even in the tournament. I’m pretty sure IamMcLovin88 smiled smugly when he outlasted me, but he busted in 3rd on the serious bubble, and only got the same prize I did, which must have stung a bit.

It would have been nicer if my suckout had led to victory, but I’ll take a refund on my $700 over a sharp stick in the eye socket any day…

After a stellar first half of January it’s been a dismal slide for the second half. I’ve continued to play a lot of “Steps” tournaments in hopes of winning another $7000 NAPT package, which, because I’ve already won one, would translate into cash for me … but not only have I failed to secure another $7000 package, I’ve been pummeled by several nasty bad beats in the attempt, to the point where January is now basically a wash. I’ve still got one more day to salvage the month, but it doesn’t look good. Disappointing.

I like to think that I’m not a chronic bad-beat complainer. I don’t believe that I “run bad” at poker the way some people claim. Sometimes I run very well indeed, and sometimes I’m on the wrong side of variance for a while, but in the long run I believe that I run just about average, the same way every other poker player runs if they play enough poker to reach anything resembling “the long run”. When people at or away from a poker table say “I run sooooo bad” I immediately lose a bit of respect for them, and my eyes roll back into my head for the rest of whatever story they’re about to tell. So I’m not saying I run bad, OK? But what I’ve run into in the last couple of weeks has become a bit comical, and I felt a desire to present it in some entertaining form, so here it is…

HUGE CRACKS HEAD REPEATEDLY

In a good-news-bad-news development, a few days ago I managed what might be my best finish ever in a big field tournament, and unquestionably my biggest comeback ever – taking a 95-chip stack (with the blinds at 50-100) up to over 350,000 chips, finishing 6th out of 1900 players. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it was in the World Blogger Championship of Online Poker, a freeroll tournament open only to “verified bloggers” in which finishing 6th out of 1900 earned me less money than in just about any tournament I’m ever likely to play … my prize was a $215 tournament ticket. [I just did the research to confirm that that is in fact my best finish in a 1000+ player tournament – I have some 4th-6th place finishes in various 800-ish player tournaments, and my best online cash was a 3rd place finish in a 780 player tournament, but I’ve never made the final table of a (non-free) tournament with over a thousand players in it, which seems like a pretty bad monkey to have on my back … add that to the list of 2010 goals]

Just to add some EXTRA icing on the cake (that would be poop-flavored icing on the cake of despair), in the most recent Team-Huge home game, which we played for higher stakes than we ever have (TEN DOLLAR rebuys, omg), I took more rebuys than anyone else, then got all-in with AA against Dan’s stupid AJ … almost the best matchup I could possibly have … and the flop came KQT for the nut straight, taking me from 11:1 favorite to 10:1 underdog with one chop of Dan’s stupid, ugly, fat (or should I say “tubby”) axe. No reverse-a-miracle full house for me and I was out in 7th place, while everyone’s old thieving pal Dan went on to win … great job Dan (NOT).

Some small consolation can be taken in the fact that I did win the weight-loss bet I had with Dan, so he will have to use all the money he won in that tournament to buy me the Rossini Burger the next time we’re in Vegas, and he’ll have to dip into his savings account to buy himself that veggie burger.

[After writing the bulk of this post, I did have one piece of unadulterated good news … I won a satellite into today’s $1050 buyin “Ultimatebet Online Poker Championship” with a $1,000,000 guaranteed prize pool, which will have Phil Hellmuth, Annie Duke, and the other UB pros in it. So that’s my shot at redeeming January – 1PM Pacific Time – I’ll let you know if anything exciting happens.]

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

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! The WBCOOP is a free online Poker tournament open to all Bloggers, so register on WBCOOP to play.

Registration code: 858555

A couple of nights ago I had my first decent score of 2010, finishing 3rd out of 364 in a $109 turbo tournament for a nice $4004 prize. I had been on a weird frustrating streak of “double the bubble” finishes – in a tournament with 1000 players paying 90 I would finish like 175th, so I couldn’t really even whine about bubbling (and you know how much I like to whine) but I would still spend hours playing for no cash. The night before the score I had two min-cashes in turbo tournaments, so I was hopeful that I had turned some sort of corner, and hope was fulfilled. The tournament was strangely not all that interesting, other than winning a couple of big coinflips on the river, losing a nasty suckout at the final table and finally busting out on a big coinflip (99 < AQ) when the three stacks were pretty much even. Always sucks to bust out on a multi-thousand-dollar coinflip, but I’d won more than my share to get there so I can’t really whine about that either (DAMN IT).

A few minutes ago I nailed down a Step 5 single-table tournament for a $2100 prize, so 2010 is not too shabby so far. I don’t know what I’ll use the $2100 Step 6 ticket for (actually I have two of them now) … right now they’re only good for qualifiers to a tournament in Uruguay, which I’d be interested to go to, but I may just wait until they start running qualifiers to the SCOOP tournaments or the WSOP. Speaking of the WSOP, they recently announced the schedule for the 2010 WSOP – I think there are 6 $1000 buyin events, all on weekends … should be good fun. I’ve made a little bit of a resolution to make sure I don’t end up in a spot where I just don’t feel like playing the main event this year – whether that means not spending the whole time in Vegas or just planning my poker finances differently – skipping the main event of the WSOP may have been the right decision at the time, but looking back on it I regret letting myself get to that point, so I’ll try not to let that happen again.

I’m also in the middle of another weight-loss prop bet with Dan (who never tires of getting mentioned in my blog) … I have to get to 180 and he has to get to … some other number … and whoever gets there first wins … loser has to take the winner out for a Rossini burger at Mandalay Bay in Vegas (I wrote about it back in November – CLICK HERE if you missed it) … and watch him eat it while the loser eats a veggie burger. Dan keeps inviting me over and feeding me, which is nice, and he’s a good cook and all, but I suspect he’s giving me the extra butter servings. Dan has also insisted on a clause that the winner gets to call the loser “Tubby” for a month, which I think is just cruel, but OK. When we have a result I’ll let you know – hell, if Dan wins I’ll even let him write it.

Happy New Year, HugePoker readers near and far – may we all run well in poker and in life in 2010 and in the decade to come…

-huge