Just a short note today because that’s all I really have time for. Lots of time yesterday morning, because I wasn’t really able to get to sleep the first night here. No issues with the room or anything, just restless from allergies. So I went into the day with less than an hour of sleep after driving down to Lincoln City and playing poker for 12 hours.
Event #1 $100,000 Guaranteed NL Hold’em Day 2
I didn’t have enormous expectations coming into the day with just 14 big blinds (I’d forgotten we still had about half the 6K blind level after stopping for the night, so it was more than 10). Somehow, I managed to creep up the pay scale from #56 in chips at the start of the day to cash out in 42nd. Then I ran ace-king suited into the big stack’s aces and it was over. More than doubled my money.
Event #2 $25,000 Guaranteed NL Hold’em
Running on less than an hour’s sleep and playing poker for an hour was probably not the ideal time to enter a tournament that was likely to go on for 12 hours, but I did it. Got seated at the same table as Darrel Dier (@guano on X.com), who I met down here back in 2013 when (if I remember correctly) he was associated with the early days of the Chinook Winds series through the Deepstacks Poker Tour/Oregon State Poker Championship. That gave me the opportunity to show him the photo I took of the Greatest Poker Hair Assemblage of All Time, which I took while I was reporting at the WSOP back in 2016 (Darrel’s in seat 9).
My performance in the tournament wasn’t stellar, though I did still have it together enough to fold kings on a straighty-flushy low-card board when Darrel made a river overbet in a 3-way pot that got called by the other player in the hand (straight for Darrel vs. two pair).
Got aces cracked in another 3-way pot when the short stack’s ace-four flushed on the river. Doubled up with a Mutant Jack.
Brad Press had proposed a small last-longer/share at the start and I agreed. He paid me his $5 on the way out the door.
Managed to get up to twice the chip average by the dinner break, but seven hours in and still not in the money I was back down to 50K and 12bb. The bubble took an hour or more, with the count stuck at 47 (45 paid).
Things were really looking up when I caught aces in the big blind and the former table chip leader who’d been on a run of bad luck (and had made at least one dubious call to pay me off on a previous hand) shoved UTG1 with threes. That win knocked him out and put me over 20bb again.
Final hand I opened to 3.5bb with ace-jack and got one caller. The flop was 98X and I shoved 15bb, he called with middle pair and an ace, which seemed a little dubious to me, but then he won the hand, so what do I know? Out in 32nd place.
Two cashes for the day. Not big cashes, and I still need to win a good deal more to cover expenses, but it’s a start. 6-Max on Monday.
Congrats to Kao Saechao for the two-way deal and the win in Event #1.
Oh, and after expenses, I owe Brad $10.85.