The numbers go ever downward!
Where I was averaging more than 20 live tournaments a month a decade ago, I’m down to an average of two-and-a-half now, and July and August saw me in exactly five live games total, through I did get into a half-dozen online bouts.
Just five events in July: one of the Friday night onlne games with Beaverton Quarantine (NLHE Bounty, placed 8/10). a trip to Portland Meadows for a NLHE Freezeout (pathetic 23/26), and three online Chainsaw Poker events (PLO Hi-Lo, PLO, and Limit Omaha Hi, where I cashed only in the last, and less than 100% ROI for 2/6 place).
Actually had two outings to my NLHE original home game in August; which has picked up the schedule a bit as the children of several of the players have been heading off to college. One of them actually got to two tables for the first time in a while, and I did a rare rebuy, but bubbled the first and only got 8/10 in the bigger game.
Played just one Beaverton Quarantine NLHE game in August; only two Chainsaw games (8-Game Mix and 7-Card Stud Hi-Lo. The Portland Meadows Wild West 12-Round Stand Off looked promising—it was similar to a Survivor tournament, but instead of an even chop for a set percentage of the players, the money would be distributed through an Independent Chip Model (ICM) calculation after 12 rounds. I only made it to the middle of round 9 (26/78) but did have some interesting—if scary—conversations about ICM.
Entirely missed the Chinook Winds Summer Classic and Wildhorse Summer Poker Round-Up.
I’ve still got a little something going, though, Final Table ran a Summer Series the last weekend of the month and I unexpectedly got a chance to play the $20K Guarantee on Friday (they had a $50K Saturday) where Steve Myers and I met up. He was on a trip up from Arizona, and even though he’s been gone for a couple years, everyone was pleased to see him.
I hit a goldmine early on in the tournament when I got lucky in a 4-way hand holding Ax Qx vs. Qx Qx vs. Jx Jx vs. Tx Tx and nobody hit a set, with an ace on the river for me to take all three pots.
Stayed above average—sometimes well above—until the bubble broke about 8 hours into the game. I’d been thinking as I suffered through a card drought approacing the money that I might get whittled away by the blinds, but we went through ten players in the hour before the bubble. Once it broke, I managed to get a shove through with about 15bb. We were down from 20 to 12 in another hour; I’d dropped to 10bb, then all of a sudden we were at the final table with just nine after a several players busted from the other table on the same hand. We lost a single player in the first hour at the FT, then with eight players left and a few people keeping an eye on the $50K guarantee tournament starting in eight hours, an eight-way chop was proposed and as the smallest stack, I was happy to oblige.
Final Table is really stepping up their social media game, with the TD encouraging everyone to do a ‘winner’s’ photo with cash spread out in front of them and follow-up posts of winners and prizes. I ended up getting more than a grand more than I would have without the chop.
That’s everything for the past couple of months. I’ll be absent from September’s Chinook Winds series because of other commitments, but the Portland Meadows Main Event Series is coming up in early October, and my brother just got married in the Philippines, so if I win the lottery maybe you’ll see me at the Asia-Pacific Poker Tour Manila Championship instead!