Busted the Final Table $20K just short of the money on Friday night, had a good run early in the tournament, stacked the player on my left twice, got down to three tables with an average stack and went card dead for a while, then shoved [ax jx] from the BB over a big stack’s 2.5x opening raise with ~10BB and ran into [7x 7x], who called after thinking about it for a while. No Tulalip for me, but I heard they got more than 300 entries.
Six-and-a-half hours. 22nd of 124 entries. -100% ROI.
Saturday, Encore ran an $18K guarantee. I enforced my self-ban on re-buys and add-ons, and was doing reasonably well through the first three hours. Picked up [jx jx] UTG, raised, and a guy on the far end of the table who was talking to his buddy behind him threw out a call of the BB. He argued with the dealer briefly about whether he needed to put in the full raise amount, then tossed in the 5K. Queen-high un-coordinated flop, I c-bet, he raised me, I shoved, and he turned over [qx 3x], then hit a [3x] on the turn. Again, I lose even with [ax ax], although I did not lose the minimum as Kyle Keranen did with his [ax ax] v. Portland WSOP sensation Curtis Rystadt‘s [qx 4x].
I did manage to pick up my buy-in in about 90 minutes after the game, playing 25¢/50¢ NLHE at Cowboy’s Aces.
Anyway, if you haven’t already seen it, I’m supposed to be on the live call-in Limon Show Podcast at CrushLivePoker.com tonight at 6pm Pacific. We’ll be talking about my Deadspin article on tournament ROI and related subjects, the backlash to said article, and possibly a little about the bizarre coincidence that we both grew up in Eugene. Limon was a guest himself on the 2+2 Pokercast a few weeks back. I don’t know if there’s a way for folks without a sub to CrushLivePoker to check out the show, but check around for promo codes for a free month.
Coming up: I should have another article for PokerNews.com soon. After the podcast tonight, I might try the HOP (NLHE, PLO, Pineapple) tournament at Big Stacks Poker Club (a new venue for me), then the next big things are a tournament at Final Table with a $10K guarantee for first place on the 18th, and the Encore Poker Series V running from the 23rd to the 26th, with a total of $125K in guarantees in four events.