Better At the Beach #1: So Much Winning!

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Not so much me winning, but still a lot of winning.

Dave Long` (above) and I made it to Chinook Winds Casino in Lincoln City, Oregon an hour or so ahead of Saturday’s Event #1 $150K GTD NLHE. The tournament was a re-entry, and I had to do that just before the first break. In the first hour, the player on my left had lost pretty much every pot he’d been in, and when he 3-bet me and action folded back around, I could have called, but instead I shoved with my [qd qc] and he called for less with [kx kc]. The flop was all low spades, then [qs] on the turn. Nether of us had a spade, and the only card that could give him a win was the non-spade king. Which came. I still had 35bb; we were only in level 2, but I almost immediately lost half of that and the dwindling continued through to literally the last hand of the break when I busted.

I’d expected to hit the bank to get my cash for the week before the tournament started, but the Lincoln City branch of US Bank was Monday—Friday only, and I borrowed $200 of my buddy Brad Press to re-enter because I’d maxed the ATM card already. I got back in and sat down after break. Ten minutes in, I get [ax ax] in early position and raise, getting about 5 callers. The flop was [ax 6x 5s] and I make a c-bet of about the same as pre-flop, get a call from the BB, and when [ks] hits on the river and BB shoved, I kind of though he might have [ax kx] but no, it was [6s 7s] for the open-ended straight and flush, the latter of which got there on the river. So, down to 10bb 10 minutes after the re-entry.

I doubled up against the player who’d broken my set with [ax tx] v [tx tx] but was back down to 10bb half an hour later, then out after about three hours total.

I played Event #2 10-Seat GTD NLHE Final Event Satellite, just one entry and the add-on, but didn’t make it even half-way through the field.

Day 2 of the $150K GTD got under way at 11am on Sunday, with 54 players coming back and everyone in the money.

Sunday’s Event #3 $75K GTD NLHE got off to a good start for me, but it started even better for Jacki Burkhardt, this year’s PNW Poker Golden Girl, when she got news via Twitter that she’d won a PokerStars Platinum Pass via the #mypokerstory contest run by writer/poker player Maria Konnikova (and judged by Helen Ellis, Jen Shahade, Matt Salsberg, and Melanie Weisner). Jacki’s heading off to The Bahamas in January to play in a $25K buyin tournament. Plus she cashed the $150K before she bought into the $75K.

I made the second break of the $75K with about triple the starting stack. Over two hours I paid blinds, folded raises to reraises, and laid hands down after unpleasant flops until I was under 30bb after just about five hours.

Then I picked up [ax kx], flopped a king, and managed to get three streets of action (including an all-in on the river) from [jx jx]. Two hours later, I was UTG with [8c 3c] and less than 10bb when they table balanced the BB and I was it! A middle-position player min-raised, I made the call more out of cussedness than anything else, and I picked up a gut-shot with potential back-door flush on [9x 7x 5c], so I shoved and got called by [ad 7d] and was out after the river.

More exciting poker today!

Special shoutout to Darrel Dier (a vet of the days when Deepstacks Poker Tour was here) who’s going to be returning to the tsunami zone this weekend after winning a main event at Stones Gambling Hall.