Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Taking One Down Again, Finally

Yesterday, I woke up around 6 PM. I made some food, and started playing at 7.

Here's the schedule:
5 $22 180 player SNGs
7:00 PM $11 20k guarantee
$109 25k guarantee
7:15 PM $11 1 re-buy 1 add-on
8:00 PM $27.50 25k guarantee
$3 re-buy
8:15 PM $55 shorthanded
9:00 PM $ 22 re-buy
9:30 PM $55 50k guarantee
10:00 PM $16.50 NLHE
11:00 PM $109 20k guarantee
$33 NLHE
11:15 PM $11 shorthanded


I also played three satellites, later on in the night because it was one of the days where, for whatever reason, all tournaments after midnight are turbo's, which I don't really like for large field MTTs. The three satellites were all SNGs. They included a $2 triple shootout to the Sunday Million, a three-table $16 satellite to the Sunday Million, and a $5 5-table SNG to the Sunday Warm-up. Pokerstars also stopped running all SNGs from like 10- 7 AM, which was moderately annoying. These satellites were the only SNGs available, I'm assuming because they were the last to fill up.

Now for the results. I took down one of the 180s! Recently, I have had several final tables in these 20 table tournaments, but have had a bad run of not getting to heads up. In this tournament though, I was getting very lucky. I already had a big stack in the money, with blinds at 300-600 when this hand came up. A player with about 15,000 raise in early position, and I had 88. This is sort of a tough spot, because he was not deep enough to justify making a call only in hopes of hitting a set on the flop, and busting him if he had a big hand. If I had 22-66 I definitely would have folded, but 88 is too big of a hand to just fold, so I decided to just call in position and reevaluate on the flop. Both of the blinds called as well, each of them having about 7,000 behind. The pot was around 8,000. The flop was 8 5 3 with two clubs, giving me the niggity nuts. The small blind pushed all in, the big blind called all in, and the original raiser shoved over the top for over 14,000. I CALL!!! One of the blinds had Ac2c for the nut flush draw and an inside straight draw, the other had 99, and the original raiser had JJ. The turn was an offsuit ten, and the river was an ace. I dragged a massive pot that put me over 90,000 in chips with blinds still at only 300-600.

That was so lucky for me, imagine flopping the immortal nuts, and having three people go all-in in front of you. At this point, there were 14 players left, and I had one third of the chips in play. I would have been disappointed with anything short of a win. We got down to three handed, and the short stack had over 30 big blinds. This is an incredibly fast tournament, usually short stacks have ten BBs or less. Again I got very lucky when he raised on the button and I had JJ in the big blind, I re-raised, he pushed all-in and I called. He had 77, and I hit a J on the turn. I now had a 2 to 1 chip lead heads up. Still my opponent had over 50 big blinds, so this could have made for a very long match. However during the first blind level of hour number four, I coolered someone again. We raised back and forth preflop, eventually getting it all in with my AA vs his TT. I won $1,080 for that.

I also cashed in one of the $109 tourneys for $266. In that tournament, I knocked out Devinr12, a high volume player who won the TLB (Tournament Leaderboard) for 2007. I raised in middle position with 88, and he went all in for about 15 big blinds. I made the call and he showed 44. My two other cashes on the night were in the $27.50 for $49 and the $11 shorthanded for $36.

I was also fortunate enough to win the $16 three table satellite, which was my second time winning a $215 seat this week. I'll be playing the Sunday Million and the Sunday Warm-Up this weekend. In that tournament I got lucky as well, pushing a shortstack with Q 6 off suit from the small blind, and getting called by A 10. He flopped a 10, I turned a Q that gave him the nut flush draw, and I dodged everything on the river. Whew! That was close. At the final table, I picked up AA back to back, eliminating three players in the process. I easily coasted into the top two after amassing another massive chip lead.

Sometime in the middle of the night, PokerStars shut down completely until 10:30 AM, which was pretty annoying. I played a little Guitar Hero 3, and watched Dr. Phil. I was pretty upset to find that for some reason, all my progress had been lost on Guitar Hero 3, so now I have to go back and beat all the songs again. So I worked on that for awhile.

I'm going home for pizza in a little while. I'll check in again soon.

Until Then,
Southrnctowl

Artists added to iTunes:
The Doobie Brothers

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