The Poker Mutant will be retiring (mostly) from poker on 1 January. This is the latest installment in his thrilling countdown to the End of Times.

Since I wasn’t able to get out to Pendleton for the Main Event at Wildhorse today, I headed over to the Portland Meadows $10K GTD NLHE, which I don’t usually get to play, because weekends are family time if I’m in town.

I entered at the start of level 4 and chipped up a bit, until I called a middle position 3x raise to 1800 and a couple calls from the small blind with [qx tx]. The flop was a rainbow [tx 7x 3x], the original raiser bet 5100 into a pot of about 9000. After the callers released their hands, I jammed my stack of more than 30000—more than enough to cover the other player—in. He thought about it for a short time, then called with [2s 3c]. A [qx] on the turn gave me top two, then a [3x] river made his trips.

I was down to 5400 after that hand, and three players limped in before me on the button. It was the last hand before the break and the start of 400/800 with 800 big blind ante. I jammed [qx 7x] and hoped for the best. The only player who called was the first limper—sitting next to the player who’d just taken most of my chips—and he had [2x 3x]. The board ran out a 6-high straight for him with a [5x] filling a gap on the river. I stood up to leave, but the player next to me pointed out what everyone—including myself—had missed, which was that I had a straight to the 7.

After break, and a table move, I chipped up to more than 30K, but as I was sliding back down below the starting stack of 25K, I tried to squeeze from the big blind over an opening button raise, only to run my [js 7s] into a pair of aces.