WPBT

Last night was the latest WPBT and the third of the year. It was back to the traditional no limit hold’em at Pokerstars. Since one table is never enough, I decided to also enter the $5000 freeroll at Absolute Poker starting at the same time. Well, it wasn’t a complete freeroll as you needed to pay 10000 ARPs to enter, but it seemed like a good deal. I was also trying to take care of a personal project at the same time, so I managed to be fairly scatterbrained throughout.

I think this is the first blogger tournament that I’ve ever entered where I was not in the chip lead at some point in the tournament. Actually, that may no be quite true as I nearly doubled-up early when I someone went all-in against me with second pair to my top pair, but I didn’t check where that put me in the chip standings. I don’t remember the player’s name, but it was a generous contribution to my stack. I do know he/she was one of the first of the 109 players to bust out.

Unfortunately I just couldn’t get into the swing of things. My cards weren’t helping, but I played pretty weak, folding to virtually anyone who played back at me. While I never dropped below my starting stack after that early double up, eventually the blinds were making my stack look pretty feeble. And 200/400 blinds I was looking for a opportunity to get all my chips in and when I found AK0 in the big blinds, it seemed just such an opportunity. Unfortunately, I should have given it some though when Bill Rini was the one raising from early position. Had I turned my brain on for a few seconds I would have recalled that he had been playing mostly strong hands and an early position raise probably signalled. It definitely did, and his KK had me in rough shape. I picked up a gutshot draw on the flop, but got no help on the turn or river. I was out in 30th, which wasn’t a horrible finish, but I might have found a better place to get my money in. Still, it’s hard to get away from AK with only 6x the BB. I can only hope that the 30th place finishmight be enough to move me up on the WPBT leaderboard.

I ended up sweating JP for the next hour and a bit, hoping that a Canadian might be able to take the title. Alas, though he made the final table, he busted out in seventh when his TT fell to AA. Bad luck JP!

Fortunately I was still kicking in the Absolute tournament. We were down to about 40 of 209 players remaining with the blinds just slightly behind those in the Stars tournament. And with the extremely flat payout ($600 for first, $100 for 16-18th) there was a decent chance I could parlay my medium stack into a benjamin. Or in my case a borden and a couple macdonalds. In fact, I was pretty lucky to be in the tournament at all after doubling up with KK vs. AA when I lucked into a flush.

Unfortunately, my luck didn’t continue and I was forced to fold some big hands to pressure on some very scary flops. Eventually I was back to a short stack, something I was getting all too familiar with. We were down to 25 players and one of them was stalling on every hand, something that was very frustrating to a short stack looking to amass a few more chips before the blinds went up. Eventually I pushed my last T3800 with ATs in first position with the blinds at 500/1000. It’s folded around to the small blind, who goes into the tank. Actually, wait, he’s just stalling, again, so it’s just up to the big stack in the big blind who calls me down but makes me happy when he flips 75s. That is, of course, until a 7 hits on the flop. Just when I’m thinking that maybe it won’t be so bad to get to bed at a reasonable hour, a beautiful T hits on the river and doubles me up.

I play one more hand out of the big blind for a small point, but the next 2 orbits are pretty uneventful (and excruciatingly slow) until the 19th player finally busts out at another table and everyone is in the money. I’m happy, thinking we’ve finally seen the end of the stalling. Unfortunately I’m wrong and with blinds at 600/1200, the moron in the 2-seat tries to shuffle his way into 16th for an extra $25. A few hands later I have K4o in the big blind. It’s folded around and when the big stack (T75000) raises me all-in from the small blind, I figure, correctly, that my hand is best. I push my remaining T4000 hoping to double-up against his J7o. Unfortunately, the poker gods did not smile on me and delivered the crushing 7 on the river. Still, 18th place was still $100, which was better than I expected from my measly stack.

Was quite a fun night of tournament poker. It’s always fun to play in the blogger events, and really, you can never argue with winning money. I just wish I hadn’t been so preoccupied so that I could have chatted a bit more in the blogger event.

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