It’s been a couple of frustrating months since the high of the Vegas cashes and the Chinook Winds event. Apart from a fourth place finish at a Final Table $10K, there were the busts at the Wildhorse and Rincon WSOP Circuit series, and nothing significant until last Friday’s Final Table $10K, when I got to short-handed play with a decent stack and had half the chips in play by the time it was down to four.
Eight hours and fifteen minutes. 1st of 65 entries. +1240% profit.
That win gave me the leeway to get into the $20K at Aces Players Club on Sunday at noon. I took a big hit early in the game, losing nearly 40% of my stack on flush and straight draws against a pair of kings, but since we started 1,000BB deep and the levels were 40 minutes long, I managed to stay reasonably healthy. My lucky spot was against one of the Aces regs when I shoved my king-high flush draw on the flop and got a call from top two pairs, then hit my spade to double up well past the chip average and knock a player out.
SM, one of my poker buddies had been seated on my left for a while, with a larger stack than me until the double up. We hadn’t gotten into it with each other until a hand when I 3x opened to 6,000 with [kc jc] UTG. He re-raised, action folded to me, and I called. The flop was [jx jx 8x]. I checked it and he bet out 15,000. I raised him to 40,000, committing about half of my chips by that point and, I thought, pretty definitely communicating to him that I had a jack. I didn’t think he’d have re-raised me pre-flop with just a pair of eights or [jx 8x], I knew he didn’t have a pair of jacks, and [ax jx] was the only jack hand ahead of me. He started to dialog about how only two hands were ahead of him, but I knew that even if he had pocket aces, there were more than two hands ahead of him. He finally shoved, and I called, and he tabled pocket kings. Of course, he got the case king on the river, the one card that could save him, knocking me down to around 40,000. He did start with the best hand, but man!
I’m kicking myself more because of a laydown I made not long after that. I called anEP raise with [as 9s] and saw the flop with the raiser and BB. The flop was low, with two hearts and a spade. I folded to a post-flop bet and call ahead of me, then watched as two more spades rolled out, with the board holding nothing higher than a seven and paired fours. BB went all in on the river and got called after some introspection by the original raiser. It was suited ace against suited ace, with BB having nothing but ace high and the original raiser with top pair. I’m pretty sure I would have called with my flush draw if I’d gotten as far as the turn, and I would have regained all the chips I’d lost to SM. Sigh.
Ended up going out to SM with [ax jx] against his [tx tx]. Hit my ace on the flop but he got the ten on the turn and took the rest of my chips, going on to make the final four chop. So good on him. I’ve tried to explain that I’m due 95% of his winnings but he refuses to admit it.
Big games in Portland this next weekend, as Final Table holds its “Fifth Friday” $20K tournament, and Encore Club has Portland’s first $40K of the year. Hoping to do well enough to finance a little expedition to Vegas and LA at the end of this next month.