Encore Club $5,000 Guarantee

My big game for the week was the Encore on Friday night rather than Saturday because I had plans for Saturday (more of that in a bit). This game got off to a great start for me and then went all to hell as it so often does.

Several players at the table had chipped up a bit from the 9,000 starting stack, although the table behind us was the one announcing re-buys every few minutes (they’d been a late-seated table and there was a re-buy on their first hand). I was in the SB at what I think was only 50/100 still, and looked down at [8x 8x]. There was some raising ahead of me, but I had to see the flop; there was a couple thousand in the pot pre-flop.

Then the flop showed [8x 7x 2x] in a rainbow of colors. If I remember the sequence correctly, I believe I checked it. BB bet out 2,000 chips. SH—a club regular seated in HJ position—called, followed by BTN. I raised to 5,000. SB pushed all-in for 13,000+, SH shoved over the top, and I was so twitchy to get my chips into the middle I set off alarms and BTN didn’t have to think about it and folded. SB had [2x 2x] and SH had the [7x 7x], so we were set over set over set. I couldn’t have been happier as my top set held through the river and I raked in a pot of about 40,000 chips.

That was the end of the good times, though. I held my fire through to the break, playing patiently. Nut the hands weren’t coming, not even suited gappers. The one time I picked up a [ks qs] in BTN position, I was ready to make a move when SH—who had re-bought and managed to build up a decent stack by that time—shoved it in. I pushed the cards away, thinking I’d find a better spot, but it just never came. When I did make a call of a raise with a speculative hand, it got picked off by stacks large enough I just couldn’t stick with it.

Eventually, I got to the point where I was getting cut down by better hands. By the end of my night, I was down to less than 10,000 chips, picked up [as qs], and shoved from late position, hoping just to take the blinds. The player in BB looked down at her hand, called, and flipped over [ax kx], hitting the king on the river.

Three hours and forty minutes. -100% ROI. 50th of 108 players.

Tomer Drops By

It was an honor to have Tomer Berda, WSOP $2,500 No Limit Hold’em bracelet winner and #12 on Bluff‘s 2010 Player of the Year list (#22 on CardPlayer‘s 2010 list) over at the house last Saturday, as he and his friend made a trip through the Northwest. He’s been a source of inspiration and useful data since we reconnected shortly before he won his bracelet. We had the usual fantastic dinner at Khun Pic’s Bahn Thai.