2019 Chinook Winds Fall Coast Poker Classic — Day 5

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My plan to do daily updates about the events here took an early hit, but in a good way, as the five of you reading the blog already know.

Sunday (seems like so far away at this point) started off well. There was a 10-Seat GTD Main Event Satellite at 1pm (no 11am game because of the restart for the $125K from Saturday).

There was a decent turnout for the satellite, which was good for the series after the overlays in the three events Saturday). I did reasonably well and picked up a voucher.

That wrapped up in almost exactly four hours, with 18 of the 80 entries getting seats.

The satellite ended just as the $50K GTD tournament was starting. There had been a nearly $20K overlay on Saturday, and I was sort of expecting that Sunday might be more of a bath for Chinook, but by the time registration closed, they’d just met the guarantee.

I busted in the second level, if I remember correctly—things are already getting a bit hazy—and rebought. 99 < AK, even though I’d had pocket aces twice in an orbit. So I needed to make 18th place to break even on the event. It took nearly six hours of play for me to get any traction; I flopped a set of kings against king-queen to double up, which put me over average for the first time.

I cockroached along for three more hours, getting progressively shorter as we approached the bubble. There was a long period there where it seemed like every all-in won, so the other short stacks just slipped down the ladder a little more. A couple of gross situations where king-jack shoved and was called by the table leader with king-queen, with a jack on the flop. Then he had another chunk taken out on the next hand (maybe not as gross as the guy in the $125K who lost with aces twice in short succession to break his big stack).

I finally got back over chip average with queens over jacks at the eight-hour mark, with four players to go before the money. We had a redraw at three tables just a few minutes before the bubble broke, which went by so fast that I completely missed the announcement and had to verify that we were in the money with Matt Moring, who was running the day’s show.

The rest of the event is kind of a blur. Maybe it was the fact I’d been playing more or less constantly for 14 hours, maybe it was the Long Island Iced Tea I allowed myself when we were down to two tables and someone else was buying. I do know that I got incredibly lucky. More than once.

We made the final table just after 3am, but it took almost an hour to get from 9 to 7 players. We were down to 5 when I lost a bit of ground calling a short stack who shoved seven-eight with my pair of sevens. The river was both an eight and made him a flush, but I survived.

Incredibly enough, chopping was never really brought up as we continued on into the early hours. We lost three players in the half-hour between 4:30am and 5am, so it was just me and Olympia’s John Gribben. That was when I proposed a chop.

I’m reasonably confident in my heads-up ranges and strategies, but at 5am,who knows? There were 3.3M chips in play between us, but the blinds were still only 20K/40K, so we had over 80bb between us, so it could have gone on for quite a while and I was really looking forward to playing the 6-Max. Which started in just six hours.

It says Event 2 but this was really Event 5

So John and I chopped. After we’d agreed, I asked for the champion photo, since I was pretty sure I had a slight chip lead. John said he wanted it, because he’d never had one. I hadn’t either, but Matt said he’d take one of both of us, and when John said he wanted to hold seven-deuce as his winning hand, I figured he might not mind if I did the old antenna trick. So congrats to the both of us!

I got back to the motel about 5:30, didn’t manage to get to sleep until after 6. Then daybreak hit and I needed something to drink at 7, and couldn’t get back to sleep despite trying. So it was off to the 6-Max (after a trip to the bank, thank you Chinook Winds for taking debit cards for buyins) where I was a little light-headed from both adrenaline and lack of sleep, but had a very good time as people ribbed me about talking so much about the night before. Or early morning.

The 6-Max was going well and I made it down to about 40th place, then played one of those small blind hands because of an ace and a couple of limps that you would have thrown away in any other position. I was about 40bb deep with Nick “Wonka” Getzen on my left, with ace-three and I called behind the limpers. Nick checked and the flop was something like ace-X-five. Nick and I got involved through to the river with a jack and queen coming and—not believing he had an ace at that point—I shoved. He seemed to really consider folding, and I knew I was in real trouble when he was musing about whether I could have somehow caught an ace-jack. He did eventually call with the ace-five, and I went to the showers.

I ran into Toma Barber at the break before the end of entries. I met Toma here at Chinook Winds six years ago before the casino decided it could do a better job than the Deepstacks Poker Tour. He was sitting next to me as a short stack on Day 1 of the first $1K+ buyin tournament I cashed (though it was a min-cash). Toma went on to take sixth.

I asked if he was in the 6-Max and he said he was waiting for the freezeout in the evening, so in a flush of cash and haze of fatigue, I bought him in. As before he made it deeper than me, though not quite to the money. My fifth-ever stacking adventure!

That was it for me on Monday. I got a nice dinner at the casino steakhouse overlooking the beach and headed for some sleep.

Tuesday was back to more losing. I had a great breakfast with Toma at 60’s Cafe & Diner  then went back to my room before walking down the beach back to the casino. I went up to the cash area and got into the 2/4 O8 game. I sat next to the dealer in seat 1, but then the guy in seat 2 moved away from me and I started to wonder if it was the fact that it had been pretty warm out on the beach. I stayed for 90 minutes to donate a hundy, then had to catch a ride back to the hotel to shower and change because there wasn’t enough time before the HORSE tournament to walk. Not the plan but you need to adapt.

Fresh once again, I set my sights to HORSE, but fizzled out on a hand where I had a pretty good draws but the guy on my left had even better draws and a better hand in the end. Disappointing to bust before the payouts were even posted when I’d skipped the Senors tournament in the morning.

After that, it was time for another shot at a High Roller satellite. Once again it missed the number of players needed to justify the 4-Seat guarantee. Made it about halfway through but nowhere near the vouchers.

Does that catch us up? Plan for the day is my dad’s arriving in town this morning. 1pm is the Omaha Hi-Lo tournament. 5pm is another High Roller satellite (which I hope to not be in).