Poker recap, 3/31-4/6
While in generally I enjoy writing up these posts, sometimes my obligations to this blog/PokerNews can be a bit painful. That's because a week of poker can often be a bit painful, and this past week was no exception.
PokerStars' SCOOP series began this past Thursday, and of course I was there to see it get underway. The first major event was the $500+R 6-max NLHE tournament. I don't really have many stories from this one - I didn't last very long in any of the High, Medium, or Low versions of the tournament, and neither did any of my horses. I was pretty disappointed, since high stakes rebuys have been my specialty, and I am very confident in my 6-max game, so I thought this would be a good tournament for me. Oh well.
I took Friday off, since my roommate had strep, and I wasn't feeling well. I basically spent the whole day in bed watching random TV and "The Wire" (HBO) DVD's. For those of you who haven't seen it, The Wire was the best show on TV for the past five years, and if you are a fan of anything awesome, you should go pick up all five seasons on DVD immediately.
Anyways, Saturday was back to the grind, and was definitely my most heart-breaking day of poker in a while. The two SCOOP tournaments of the day were NL Shootouts ($1575 double and $162 triple), and PLO 6-max w/ one rebuy and one add-on ($2100 and $215).
In the double shootout, I got off to a pretty rough start, but managed to make it down to five-handed at my first table, despite a dwindling chip stack. The fivesome was tough - myself, TitanTom, busto_soon, Belabasci, and WSOP runner-up Ivan Demidov. I finally started to run pretty well at this point, winning a huge pot off busto_soon with a set against his nut flush draw, and made a good four-bet/call 3-handed against Belabasci preflop, my AQ AT. This put me heads-up with Demidov. To say the least, it was not close. Despite losing a big all-in on a T86 flop with 97 vs. J8, I completely dominated the action vs. Ivan, and finished him off without too much trouble. I felt like I was playing great, and was very pumped going to the second/final table.
This table was also very tough, with Peter Eastgate (WSOP champ), Timex, and steamraise (Daniel Alaei) amongst others. I lost a pretty big pot when I flopped top two pair and eventually ended up having to fold the river, but still had a ton of chips when my knockout hand occured...
At 300/600, steamraise (35k stack) raised in EP to 1600. With about 35k back, I flatted in MP with JJ. The button called as well, and the flop came a beautiful JhTh8c. Steamraise checked, and I put out a moderate bet of The button folded, and steamraise put out a big check-raise, basically committing himself. I put in the rest, and was horrified when he flipped over the 9h8h, for the open-ended straight flush draw, one of the worst hands I could be up against. The 7d turn and the brick river meant that was the 10th-place finisher, first guy out at the final table. Sigh.
Unfortunately, the day's heartbreak was not over. While I busted the $2000 quickly, I got myself a huge stack in the $200 1r1a PLO 6-max. While I don't really remember many specific hands, I do remember jokingly telling my friends with about 80 people left that "I'm definitely on pace for a 12th-place finish." This was basically my running joke for the rest of the tournament. Well, next time I'm definitely going to joke around that I'm on pace for first, because long story short, I ended up busting in 12th. I got it in on the flop with the nut flush draw against top set, and was very excited when my flush hit the river. Unfortunately, it was also a card that filled his boat, and my day was done, with a nice extra dose of pain for the hell of it.
Sunday was expected to be a huge day, with the start of the $3000 two-day event, but honestly, the entire day was so miserable for myself (and my horses) that I just don't feel like going into much detail. I bubbled the 3k, lost huge flips in the money of the Mulligan, Stars 100r, FTP Turbo 100r, etc, and took infinite bad beats. In other words, it was a typical Sunday.
Anyways, this week is a new week, and there's a bunch of huge tournaments, including the $10,000 SCOOP Main Event this coming Sunday. I'm trying to keep my head up, though it can be hard on a downswing like this. I think I'm playing great and hopefully for my next post, I can tell you guys all about the huge score I just had.
Till then,
AJK
