Not a lot to report in the past week. The day before last week’s cash in the Friday Encore $11K, I’d chopped a $1K at Final Table, then I stopped into The Game for some 1/2 shootout action and picked up a profit of 60BB in an hour, even after losing another 90BB with a nut flush draw v. a set on the flop of my next-to-last hand. Went out on the bubble of our home game shoving [qh 9h] on the button into [ax qx] in the BB, four-handed.

Tulalip Poker Pow Wow #5 $10K Added NLHE Main Event

This was the first big shot of this spring’s attempt to build something up. The drive from Portland took me almost exactly four hours, I got to the casino almost exactly at the noon start time, then it took me a few minutes to track down the new site of their poker room, since the signs still point to where the old location was.

Still, I was only about a quarter-hour late getting into the first 40-minute level. My stack went through a couple rounds of losing and recovering, then I got into a hand with [ax jx], hit top pair on a [ax tx 4x] board, and let the kid on my right bleed 5K off my 12K stack with top two before I pulled the rip cord.

That left me drifting down to a 15BB stack when the third level began. I can’t blame the bad performance on my cards. After three levels (two hours), I’d had [ax ax], [qx qx] twice, [tx tx], and [9x 9x] twice, but when they were good, nobody played back against me, and I’d lose my raises after the flop made my tens and nines dangerous territory.

During the second set of levels, I managed to stay between 8—12BB, taking a flier on [2x 2x], [3x 3x], [7x 7x], and [8x 8x]—all of which just cost me chips—and managing to survive three or four all-ins, twice against the only woman at the table, when I had aces and queens in my blinds, and I shoved over her raise. She didn’t look very happy with me.

A couple notes from that set of levels.

The kid in Seat 1 I’d handed chips to early on had gotten himself in a situation similar to mine in later rounds, and shoved his chips at one point. The dealer announced his all-in and put the big yellow button in front of his stack. An aggressive older reg at Seat 7 had been talking to his neighbor while action folded around to his small blind, and just put out chips to complete without declaring a call. The dealer told him there was an all-in (about 12BB), and the reg mucked his cards. The dealer called the floor, who ruled the chips needed to complete the big blind call were forfeit, but that there was no call of the all-in. Seat 1 was upset about the ruling, as you could well expect. I have to admit, I didn’t speak up although I vaguely knew the TDA rule on it would be a call of the full amount.

39: Binding Declarations / Undercalls in Turn

A: General verbal declarations in turn (such as “Call” or “Raise”) commit a player to the full current action. See Illustration Addendum.

B: A player undercalls by declaring or pushing out less than the call amount without first declaring “call”. An undercall is a mandatory full call if made in turn facing 1) any bet heads-up or 2) the opening bet on any round multi-way. In other situations, TD’s discretion applies. The posted BB is the opening first round bet in blind games. All-in buttons greatly reduce undercall frequency (See Recommended Procedure 1). This rule addresses when a player must make a full call and when, at TDs discretion, he may forfeit the underbet and fold.

The operative words in B are “The posted BB is the opening first round bet in blind games.” The reg wasn’t heads-up, and the raise was not the opening bet in the round. Neither condition was satisfied, so it was one of those “other situations” where TD discretion is the deciding factor. I felt for the kid, who was grumbling about it for a couple hands before he was moved to balance the table, but in this case the TD had a choice.

Seat 4 came to the table after a re-entry, with tales of having just got back from playing at the Venetian, where he’d managed to get stuck $6K in just a few hours after running top two pair into bottom set three times. It was almost painful to see him get busted in the tournament with [ax tx] against [7x 7x] on an [ax tx 7x] flop.

My time almost came just after the second break. We’d had 82 entries and the announcement came that there were 41 players remaining. A new player was moved into Seat 1. He was UTG on his second hand and raised to 2.5K at 400/800/100. I had [ax ax] and a grand total of 6.3K. I shoved. The reg who’d been involved in the undercall kerfuffle through about it for a bit and called. UTG called. The flop was [as kc js]. Not horrible for me, but with a lot of possible unpleasantness. Both the other players checked through [qs] on the turn and [8h] on the river. I flipped over my hand and said: “Well, I’ve got a set of aces,” expecting one of the others to flip the dreaded ten. Seat 1 turned up a pair of kings. Seat 7 mucked. And suddenly, I was relevant with more than 21K. Not chip average, but reasonable to make it through another couple levels, so long as I didn’t screw it up.

It doesn’t take long for dreams to die. On the next round of the button, I was in middle position and called an early raise to 3K, with [ad td]. The raiser was an older man (older than me, I mean) and I took the nearly 4x raise to indicate a medium-to-strong pair. We were heads-up to the flop: [ax 8d 4x]. He put out another 6K. I should have re-evaluated at this point and double-checked his stack, because 9K nearly half his chips. Instead, I went with my initial read and shoved over the top. He didn’t take much time to call with [ax jx], the board left his safe, and I was down to 3BB just like that.

Two hands later, I have [ax 7x] and shove, with BB about to hit me in two hands. I got two callers, I made my ace on the flop, but the board ran out a flush on the river and suited connectors in seat 10 took me out of the game.

Four hours and forty-five minutes. -100% ROI.