Category Archives: No Limit Hold’em

Hate To Say I Told You So — April/May 2025

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It’s been a busy couple months here at Mutant Poker, even though my playing volume is still so much lower than it used to be and I don’t have any plans to go to Las Vegas this summer because of real-life stuff. Things to be happy about, though!

The Poker

First off, the past couple of months have been profitable, if not enormously so, which is always an accomplishment for someone who plays tournaments almost exclusively. I played just 25 tournaments (5 in April and 20 in May), with only two of those live (more on these types of numbers later).

No live poker at all in April, just a couple of small online home games and three in an online poker league. I bricked the first three (two Stud/8 tournaments and a NLHE Bounty), then won a single-table PLO tournament and a 21-entry 8-Game Mix that saved the month.

Just 6 of the 20 tournaments in May were NLHE (one live). I took first in two of the online home games. I was on a roll from the start in the live home game—nearly knocking out two players on the second hand—right up to the bubble when a player who’d clawed his way up from nothing at first lost a flip against me on the flop then hit a set on the turn and left me gasping for air and the booby-prize of less than half a buy-in.

The rest of the games were PLO/8 and PLO/8 Bounty (5), PLO (1), 8-Game Mix (3), HORSE (1), Stud/8 (3), and O/8 (1). I cashed in half of them and won the PLO, a PLO/8 Bounty, an 8-Game, and a Stud/8. The buy-in’s aren’t huge, the fields aren’t particularly big, but it’s great to be able to play something other than NLHE so regularly.

This would all theoretically hearken well for a WSOP trip, but no.

The Stats

May marks 14 years since I started keeping track of every real-money poker event (cash and tournaments). I built my own primitive online tracking tool just after Black Friday and a shift to live poker put a kibosh on automatically recording everything with Poker Tracker. At the time, I also had some ideas on how gauge the future profitability of tournament poker players who can be good even if they’re underwater financially.

Here are some stats on the local rooms I’ve played in in that time:

  • 452 events at The Final Table Poker Club
  • 448 events at Encore Club (that’s not going up any more)
  • 431 events at Portland Players Club (same)
  • 160 events at Aces Players Club / Aces Full Poker Club
  • 99 events at Portland Meadows Poker (looking forward to that third digit)
  • 21 events at The Game
  • 17 events at Cowboy’s (briefly underneath Aces)
  • 11 events at The Last Frontier 
  • 8 events at Claudia’s
  • 8 events at Oak Tree Casino
  • 4 events at Ace of Spades 
  • 4 events at Deuces Players Club
  • 2 events at Rialto Poolroom
  • 1 event at Big Stack Poker Club (does that put me at 100 with Brian Sarchi?)
  • 1 event at Trio Poker Room

The bulk of that was in the years between 2011 and 2016, which is one of the reasons the Meadows number is so low, relatively. I went to work at the WSOP in the summer of 2016 after being mostly unemployed for years (hint: not the best time to pick up poker as a hobby unless you’re good at it) and came back to a job offer that took me off the streets during the weekdays when I had been frequenting Final Table, PPC, and Encore.

When I posted this in the NW Poker group on Facebook the other day, I got queries about some of the other fine rooms that have existed in the past 15 years. There are places I just didn’t get to. Sorry.

The Tracker

One of my projects the past month has been to update the software I use to track my poker playing. I wrote a crude system back in the spring of 2011 using mySQL (online database software) and PHP (a scripting language) but I’m a hack programmer. While I’ve been working with and programming computers since the days when we used paper tapes and punch cards, my formal programming training ended before any of the modern languages were even developed and more than a decade before the birth of the World Wide Web. Event the languages I did learn in depth (and wrote books and articles about) are long-dead. It’s been more than 20 years since I wrote my last book. So what I created was pretty unsophisticated but it did most of what I wanted it to do, which was to sort events by start and end dates, cash and/or tournaments, venues, minimum and maximum entrants for tournaments, and min/max buy-ins. Plus, it showed running totals for cost, payouts, and profits over the selected time period, median ROI for profitable tournaments, and the value of a metric I came up with called Tournament Performance Index, which is derived from a ratio of percentage of tournament cashed and the median ROI.

The “design” of the old tracker was pretty minimal, but it did use different backgrounds on tournaments and cash games, with varying shades for profitable events and unprofitable events. Despite the fact that part of my actual job is implementing the design for web sites, I didn’t put a whole lot of time into making it look nice, because I was the only person who was going to see it; I never had any intention to make it into a product—I’m not that kind of guy (i.e. a good businessman).

I’ve been wanting to do a revamp for a long time, and there were some features I wanted that were just too much of a hassle to add for just myself, but a recent evaluation of Codeium’s Windsurf Pro AI coding aid led me to do a complete rewrite of the PHP backend (API or Application Programming Interface that communicates to the database) and front-end. The front end was originally written in PHP, returning an HTML web page to the browser. My goal was to do something more modern, with a front end written in React, a JavaScript variant that does its work in the viewer’s browser. I’ve done a fair amount of work in React over the past five or six years, but most of it has been making data look pretty, not on actually fetching and slicing and dicing the data. If I was doing that for work, it’d be one thing, but any time I spend on tracker development is time I could be playing poker.

Windsurf certainly didn’t do the job instantly. Nor did it execute instructions with perfection. I found that with some tasks, once a component had been built, it was at times far more difficult to refine the component to get it to do what I wanted than it was to throw it all away and start over, knowing where I’d run into problems on the prior attempt. But with a couple of days of work, the basics of the tracker had been completely rebuilt. With a few more days poking at it, it was on a par with the pool I’d built up in dribs and drabs over 14 years, and even had a few new twists. Plus, it was going to be far easier to add new features.

At the heart is a simple form where all of the content should be obvious except for consortium which was a long-ago plan for a few of the guys in our home game to share a portion of our winnings, which—apart from me paying out $300 for the first $10K GTD I final tabled at Encore Club back in 2011—never saw any other money transacted. I could probably get rid of that column but it’s in the database.

I can filter events by date, name, buy-in,, and number of entries, and can show or hide by venue. I’ve been taking photos of tournament screen when I bust out for almost 15 years now, so it’s pretty easy to keep track of that info even if I don’t feel like entering it in right away. Believe it or not, I’m more likely to forget to take a photo when I’ve cashed than when I’ve busted short of the money.

Individual events have their own row with the date, event name venue, event type (T here for three tournaments). A number after a T indicates the number of tournaments in a row without a profit (thankfully just 1 here). An identifier for the venue. Basic financials, placement, cumulative financials, notes under the number on rebuys, addons, and payouts (if I take them). And a little graphic indicator to indicate the number of minutes played in the event (one full circle for each hour).

Yes, I only lasted 5 minutes in the game in the middle. It was a max late reg!

Up near the top are some tournament stats. As I said earlier, I’ve been running hot the past couple months, at least in my very minor-league circles.

Finally, some charts. As a big believer in data science and poker–let’s call it Moneychip–I’ve made a variety of charts over the years to try to figure out what, if anything,I was good at, and just how good “good” was. Aside from the standard cumulative cost, payout, and profit line chart at the top, the radar chart below it shows me where I’ve finished in tournament fields as a percentage of the field. As I mentioned, it’s been a good couple of months, with the upper-right quadrant of the Tournament Placement chart showing 1st-place finishes in more than a quarter of the events over April and May (I was first out in several events, as well). My version of the chart has grid lines at 90% (the old standard for payouts in larger fields) and 85% (the standard at the WSOP in most events). but smaller events often pay higher percentages, if barely.

So. That’s it for this edition. I’ve got more charts to make. Maybe some poker.

Outsmarted — February/March 2025

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Another couple of months of light pokering. The Chainsaw Poker league continues to be interesting, though I only had two min-cashes in 14 shots over February and March. So, no profits but I got to play 8-Game Mix, Stud/8, HORSE, PLO/8, and Omaha/8.

In the Beaverton Quarantine league, I only played a couple games during February, then four in March (including two on one night), winning two outright (a NLHE Bounty and NLHE) and ending another NLHE in a three-way chop. The other three (NLHE Bounty, PLO, and PLO/8 Bounty) I was dead last.

The original home game had a get-together in February and I got off to a good start with aces vs. kings in the early levels, pulling into the chip lead early on only to have the whole thing go gunnysack over the course of two hands after the end of rebuys and I ended up in 10th place out of 12.

I wasn’t able to make it down for much of the Chinook Winds PacWest Poker Classic, but I was able to get there for the opening weekend’s $100K GTD NLHE tournament. Got pasted early on and re-entered.

On the next-to-last hand before the end of registration break, I was down to 20bb UTG and opened AA, getting 4 callers. The flop was 964 rainbow; I continued for 4bb and a loose caller across from me plonked in more than my stack. I called, he shows 9T offsuit and the aces hold despite his straight draw on the turn. On the last hand before break, a well-known Portland-area player shoved in late position with a new stack over the same player’s limp. Shover says he’s all-in blind and shows 64 offsuit. The caller shows 63 off, hits a 3 and the shover’s knocked out.

I got another pair of aces against the same player and won another hand after registration closed, then a set of queens put me up about the necessary chip average for making Day 2 (although we were still a long way off).

The winner of the previous fall’s Main Event sat down on my left. She’s a very aggressive player, so there were advantages and disadvantages to that. A player in early position raised to 6bb and I called with TT on the button. She shoved 25bb on a 442 flop and I call. AK against my tens and she hits the ace on the river. My beautiful stack!

Half an hour after my peak and I’m down more than 100K in chips and feeling kind of sick. 36 players to the money (72 payouts) and I was down to 70K.

Got AA again and raised from early position; the former main event champ called and when the flop came K-high, I shoved my last 14bb. She thought for a while and called with KQ offsuit. The Q paired on the turn, but an 8 on the river paired the flop and I made the better two pair for a double up. She toasted off another 125K limping with an over pair and letting the BB make a straight with 64. At 3 to the money, she was very short on the next orbit when I raised QJ suited from the button. She shoved 5bb, I called vs her KK, flopped a gunshot straight draw and hit it on the river, knocking her out just short of the end of the day.

I ended up 43/72 of the players coming back for Day 2, but I was still in.

There were two very short stacks at the table at the start of the day but also two of the top 10 stacks. And one of the guys who used to play in our home game. When I talked to him about why he wasn’t coming any more, he mentioned it was because of one of the other players—and it wasn’t me! Unfortunately for him, he caught a set of nines against a flush draw that hit on the river and crippled him and he was out in the mid-60s.

Got a couple all-ins through without any calls to stay alive while I was in the 10-15bb range. We had some drama when a player got moved to the table and dumps a couple handfuls of chips in front of his seat, then wanders off during a hand before action gets to him to talk to a buddy at the nearby payout table. He came back and rooted through his chips saying he thought he had a 25K chip. One of the floor people finds a 25K chip in the aisle but says he can’t have that one since there’s no way to verify that it was his. That causes some chatter at the table and beyond until Forrest Auel comes over to say they’ve verified that it was his chip. All is well.

Ninety minutes into the day and I’d made enough to pay for both my buyins and my room for the night, so I was happy. Almost half the field was gone, but I was hovering in the 15bb range.

The Mutant Jack (AJ suited) paid off for a double up against 99. I shoved 15bb, hit the jack and a flush draw on the flop, made the flush on the turn, and picked up another jack on the river just for safety. Made it to the first break with 334K at the 10K/15K big blind ante level, so still only 22bb.

Slid down to about 200K, chopped a hand AK==AK, and finally hit the wall with 99 against AA.

Still less than a 100% ROI (given the re-entry) but it did make me feel better about the quality of my NLHE game.

Maybe too much better, because when I hit the Final Table $10K GTD NLHE on the next Friday, I didn’t even make the point where they posted the payouts, even after a rebuy and add-on.

Portland Meadows ran a late-month mid-week PLO Bounty that sounded like just the thing, but it went very poorly for me and pretty much everyone else at my table as the guy in seat 9 was absolutely crushing everyone. You can see his stack below that was before the end of re-entry (after I blew my second stack with at least a chance of winning against his flopped set). By the time I left, more than half of the 40 bounties in play had been collected and I think he had about 15 of them.

WSOP CIrcuit Maryland Controversy

I’m late to the party on this story, where back at the beginning of March, the wrong player was awarded a pot, in a hand that knocked out a player in third place at the WSOPC Maryland NLHE Main Event. Divyam Satyarthi had Q♣️T❤️ vs A❤️3♠️, there were both flush and straight draws on the board by the turn, and both were completed on the river, after Satyarthi had paired on the flop.

Satyarthi was the short stack by a significant amount, with just about a million chips at the time he went all-in according to Poker.org, compared to more than 9 million each for the other two players.

The player who was awarded the pot, Maurice Hawkins, ended up winning the tournament after having to make a couple of come-backs against Dan Chalifour, and there’s been some shade thrown his way by a number of people (alluded to in the PokerNews Podcast episode covering the story) about whether he knew he’d actually lost the hand and was celebrating his straight as a away of distracting people from seeing the flush.

Most of the controversy about this has centered on whether reporters who see an error like this should speak up, even though in this case, the reporter didn’t see the flush themselves, likely until they were reviewing video to write up the hand.

That video (shared on Poker.org) shows that less than two seconds pass between the time the dealer lays down the river card (at 0:19 seconds into the video, on the left) and the time he kills the winning hand (at 0:21 seconds, on the right). As the river card’s transiting the board, it’s obscuring the suits of other cards; and the Q♣️ in the winning hand is already partially obscured by the fact it’s on the bottom. By the time the hand’s being killed, there’s no way to see the suit of the card that would have made the win. Should Satyarthi have known that he had a club? Maybe, but so should the dealer. Another second or two of delay before the hand was killed would have made a difference.

How much of a difference? Satyarthi got $64,458 for third place. At the time he went all-in, his stack was worth about $72K according to an ICM calculator (with Hawkins’s worth about $115K and $112.5K for Challifour. Doubling up through Hawkins would have given Satyarthi another $7 in equity, mostly coming from Hawkins. He still would have been at a 4:1 chip disadvantage, but there was a point just a couple of hours later where Hawkins himself was down to what Satyarthi would have had if the chips had been awarded properly.

Play Money

Just been practicing my skills on PokerStars Lite.

Main Offender — January 2025

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It’s the run-up to a new poker year, with the Chinook Winds PacWest Poker Classic just around the corner at the beginning of March, and my poker purse is looking a little strained. I’ve already had inquiries from two friends about WSOP plans and frankly, I’m not sure it’s going to happen this year unless I pick up the pace a bit. The droughts feel even droughtier when you’re not playing as often.

Portland Meadows Big Game Series Big O, January 10, 2025

So I did play a bit more live this month, all at Portland Meadows because of their Mixed Game Series. I made three of the games on two days, busting way early in the Big O (I was not re-buying) on Friday night.

Portland Meadows Big Game Series Big Bet Mix Dealers Choice, January 11, 2025

The Big Bet Mix Dealers Choice game went better but I barely made the end of registration (still an improvement on the Big O). I hung around the club to wait for the PLO Big Bounty tournament in the evening, and once again failed to make the end of reg. All in all, a disappointing showing.

Portland Meadows Big Game Series PLO Big Bounty, January 11, 2025

I’d opened the month with a couple of Beaverton Quarantine online games (and I played another after getting home so early after the Big O tournament). I picked up a few bounties, but didn’t even make the entry fee back for one of them. Four games, four losses, with a slight offset from the two bounty games.

Played six tournaments with the Chainsaw Poker group online, Omaha Hi-Lo for one, a PLO Hi-Lo, and four HORSE tournaments. Min-cashes in the PLO and one HORSE.

Wrapped up the month with another excursion (well, a couple) to Meadows. They had a Friday night satellite to their $500 entry Big Stack Freezeout tournament, and I took a shot. $80 (including door fee) seemed like a great bargain, even though I haven’t been playing a lot of No-Limit Hold’em.

I had a good start with a player in middle position making a raise when I was on the button with aces. I 3-bet him and he went all in with kings. The board rollout quads for me. I never got near my target stack for a satellite, but it was a standard satellite, not a Milestone, so I just had to stick it out.

Portland Meadows Big Stack Satellite, January 23, 2025

My stack limped along at around 10bb most of the last half of the tournament, then after about 4 hours we were suddenly down to the final table of 9, with one person not getting anything. I didn’t catch exactly what was happening, but I heard that the player in seat 9 had somehow made it to the final without realizing they were playing for a seat into the next day’s tournament. I was in seat 3 in the small blind on the first hand, and when there were several limps ahead of me, I just folded. The flop was 973, seat 9 blasted off when it got to him, and he was called by the big blind. Heads-up, seat 9 had top-top (A9) but BB showed 73 and the race for seats was over just like that.

Portland Meadows Big Stack Freezeout, January 24, 2025

Sadly, it was all for nought (apart from the $75 cash payout that went with the satellite seat that almost covered by entry and door fee). Carl Oman ate my lunch several times during the day and I busted in round 8. Though I was glad that I made it past round 4 or 5, I was still rather disappointed that registration was still open when I was knocked out. The final prize pool ended up being an even $100K.

Portland Meadows Big Stack Freezeout, January 24, 2025. Bust-out shot.

Coming up for me this month, a couple of live home games (finally pulling my chips out of the garage to lend them to a friend); the Chainsaw Series of Poker, a series of online non-NLHE tournaments; Final Table has a special $20K GTD tournament on the 21st; then on the 23rd I need to make a choice between the Final Table Deepstack or a Portland Meadows Big O Special. Then it’s whatever I can get to for Chinook Winds the week after that.

A Get Together to Tear It Apart — November/December 2024

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It’s been 14 years since I opened the doors of the blog. I wasn’t even 50 at the time and I just turned 63 last month. Black Friday was still months away—I run into people these days who’ve never even heard of Black Friday or remember the years of being able to play PokerStars and Full Tilt here in Oregon—and the social card room scene in Portland was really just getting off the ground. I was just starting to get more involved in poker, after just playing in a home game for a couple of years. Seems like forever.

The amount of real poker I’m playing these days continues to slide, though to be fair, this two-month period did have some family stuff and holidays mixed through it. And I have been playing a fair amount of play money poker on the PokerStars.net app, racking up another 1M in chips there in games with buyins of just 25-50K. But to the real money…

The month started out great, with two wins in the Beaverton Quarantine series (a NLHE Bounty and PLO Hi-Lo). Very small games, though, so the profit’s small. Lost two games, then got second out of 10. Nothing but a single bounty in my next four outings though, with me busting out of the last two games I played for the year in eighth place out of eight players in both a NLHE and PLO Bounty game. A small profit for the two months, overall.

It was a bad couple of months for me on Chainsaw Poker. Played three PLO Hi-Lo and one Limit Omaha Hi-Lo, just missing the money on the last PLO game. That’s a loss all-around.

Final Table ran a special $20K GTD in mid-November and I went out there for the first time in a couple months. Got halfway through the field of nearly 150 entries and busted well clear of the money.

The big shot for me at the end of the year was a defense of my 2nd place finish at the Portland Meadows Oregon State Championship Big O. A repeat was not to be, however, even after a re-entry and sort of a comeback on the re-entry. Busted twice before the end of registration!

I was in Palm Springs for a week with my dad and considered popping out to the newly-reopened poker room at one of the Agua Caliente Casino locations in town (three casinos, only one poker room) but didn’t get the chance to get over to the other side of town on Tuesday or Thursday when they had tournaments running.

The home game fired up for one last 2024 event in the middle of December. It was just a couple days after the Quarantine games I busted out of in last place, and true to form, I busted out of this one eighth of eight.

Friend of the blog Brad Press keeps posting me pictures of big stacks of chips from the semi-weekly $8/$16 Limit Omaha Hi-Lo cash game he plays in at Last Frontier Casino, so since I had the week between Christmas and New Year’s off, I took the opportunity to head up there on the penultimate day of the year. Even though I took Brad’s advice and called to get on the list before I left Portland, the game was running and I was last on the list when I got there a little after 9am.

Brad suggested I enter the morning $1K GTD. Did that, chopped the top two spots, then a second table of $8/$16 opened up and I lost half my profit. Headed home and was back by 1pm!

That’s wraps for me, the Poker Mutant, for 2024, after thinking I was hanging up my card cap in 2023. I’ll be back for more low-stakes, low-volume action in a month or so, with the results from next weekend’s Mixed Games Festival at Portland Meadows!

Closed For the Season — August 2024

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Final Table $20K GTD NLHE

It’s been a looooong time since I’ve cashed in one of these, and even longer since I had a significant cash in one, which is bad, because of the last 13 events I’ve played at Final Table, 10 of them have been their monthly First Friday $20K (the others were Friday night $10Ks and one special $40K).

I have to go back before the pandemic to May 2018 to an ICM deal to find something other than a min-cash in any of the $20Ks. Didn’t even make it that far in this one, where I was doing well until I got trapped by a guy who looked like an evil Kevmath who got a back-door 2 pair with five-deuce from the big blind to beat my ace-jack top pair in what started out as a raised multiway pot. All downhill from there. 134th out of 207.

Beaverton Quarantine

Five sessions of this home game on the PokerStars Lite platform. All NLHE, with two bounty games. Picked up a bounty but didn’t cash in the first one, bubbled the fourth, then made 2nd of 13 entries in the last one. Not enough to be in the black for this venue, though.

Puffmammy Home Game

The old gang got together for only the sixth time since the pandemic began (with the promise of more soon). I got off to a great start, stacking the same player twice but then ending up as the bubble after his third bullet pulled out aces versus my ace-king, taking a huge chunk out of my stack. I haven’t had a profit in this game since March 2020.

Portland Meadows Wild West Series Omaha Showdown

Probably should have taken the omens on this one seriously. I didn’t pay close enough attention to my Tri-Met Trip Planner and walked to Division instead of Belmont after work, which ended up with me getting to the 6pm game 20 minutes later than I’d planned.The Showdown was a 5-Card Omaha game, alternating between Hi and Hi-Lo. I lasted less than an orbit, flopping top two pair and turning a full house (tens full of queens) but running into queens full of tens. Congrats to Jen Barnard for the win. And to Meadows for their Saturday Pots o’ Gold tournament with nearly $93K in the prize pool for a $400 buy-in!

Chainsaw Poker

The saving grace for the month for me was Chainsaw Poker. Nine tournaments (3 x 7-Card Stud Hi-Lo, 2 x PLO Hi-Lo, 1 x PLO Hi-Lo Bounty, 2 x Limit Omaha Hi-Lo, 1 x 8-Game Mix); 3-way chop in PLO Hi-Lo, wins in Omaha Hi-Lo and 7-Card Stud Hi-Lo.

My last game of the month was one of the Stud Hi-Lo games. It hit 18 entries and by the time we were down to 9, I had a third of the chips in play and a 2:1 lead over the next largest stack. Nobody really got close for the rest of the final table, and heads-up started with me ahead about 8:1.The structures are pretty turbo, there were fewer than 20 big bets in play by that point, and the whole tournament only ran about 90 minutes.

Really loving the chance to play a variety of games in small fields. And that my record here for this month makes up for everything else and puts me in the black the first time in 2024.

Coming Up

Not absolutely sure what’s I’m doing this month, there’s a lot of family stuff coming up. But starting on the 13th, Meadows is running Friday night satellites to their $1K Main Event on October 12th, and there’s the Chinook Winds Fall Coast Poker Classic coming up September 21st to 29th. I might make the beginning or ending weekend, but no way I can take another week off for poker this year and definitely not this month.

Oh Lord! When? How? — June 2024

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Las Vegas 2024

Sunday

This trip had been on the books for a couple of months. My long-time poker travel partner David had been making a lot of trips to Vegas for cash games and offered me part of a comped room at the Flamingo. Booked the flight on Alaska for a Sunday morning to Friday night with points; how could I not go?

David and I booked the same flights by sheer chance, so we met up at PDX early Sunday morning, split a ride to the Flamingo, and checked into the room early because of someone’s Diamond Plus status (not mine).

The view was pretty good, once you overlook the roof. I mean, we really overlooked the roof. My wife says the towers at Caesar’s Palace remind her of grain elevators.

We got settled in, then headed over to the Paris/Horseshoe complex. I’d pre-registered through Bravo Poker Live for WSOP Event #27 $1,500 Big O but needed to go through FasTrac verification. No line at the desk, got my tickets there, then wandered off to see where my table was.

Micah Bell stopped by my table before play started, telling me I should play better than I did when I knocked him out of a Big O tournament last December. Apparently, I didn’t take his words to heart, because I only lasted about three-and-a-half hours while Micah made it to Day 2. That was it for me for the day, though I did go get set up with a new WSOP.com account. I did have the honor of holding up the bottom of the chip counts because I was updating with the MyStack app from PokerNews

I was at the bottom of the listing even before I busted the Big O.

So that was an inauspicious beginning. Down $1,500 to start the week. Went back to the room and headed over to Ellis Island, where Dave picked up the bill for the $10 prime rib dinner at their restaurant.

Monday

The next event on my schedule wasn’t until the afternoon; Brad Press convinced me to head over to the Orleans Casino for a $30K GTD with a $300 buy-in that started at 11. Didn’t go great, managed to get tens in against queens and I was out before the end of re-entry.

The new-ish Milestone Satellite format they’re running for the mega satellites at the WSOP was something I hadn’t played, and I wasn’t sure how my style of play would work; I’m not usually a big stack until the end (if ever). As it happens, my first experience with it in the 3pm $250 buy-in (paying out $2K chunks) did not go well, with me buying out of Level 1 with 20 seconds to go. Tens again.

There were only 23 players in the satellite by then (it got up to 85 by the end) but I elected to jump into the Monday HORSE Deepstack, in preparation for Wednesday’s bracelet event. I lasted longer there (after waiting about thirty minutes for tables to open up), but nowhere near long enough.

Got back to the room too late to catch David for the prime rib dinner, and feeling a little burned by four straight whiffs, decided to fire up some low-stakes online action. Played a $500 GTD PLO 6-Max PKO through about half the field, then caught some wind in a $1K GTD NLHE 6-Max Super Turbo and came in fourth out of 82. Busted out of a $150 GTD PLO 6-Max Turbo and another NLHE 6-Max Super Turbo (with a $400 guarantee), so by the end of the day I was only down $2,264.

Tuesday

Tuesday was the second bracelet event I had on my list, the $1,500 Seven Card Stud. It’s the smallest-field bracelet event in my budget—only 406 entries this year—but I decided to pass it by for some smaller games. Struck out in a quick $1K GTD NLHE Turbo before I headed out to South Point Casino to meet up again with Brad before he headed home. I was hoping to pick up some of his turnaround energy—he’d had a bad few days on his trip before final tabling at South Point three times and once in a Milestone Satellite at Orleans.

I battled through about three-and-a-half hours of a $10K GTD NLHE tournament, making it past the end of registration and about 60% of the field before the end came (Brad went on to another final table; he also won a seat to their $50K Tournament of Champions Freeroll).

Late-registered the $4K GTD Omaha Hi-Lo that was about to begin and managed to bust in Level 4.

Back to the Horseshoe for the 7pm $580 NLHE Landmark Satellite. That only lasted 4 levels, too. Tens were once again my bane. Ended the day $3,064 in the hole.

Wednesday

Event #35 $1,500 HORSE didn’t start until 2pm, so I started the day started playing 0.10/0.20 PLO on WSOP.com. Clawed back $5. Jumped into a $1K GTD NLHE Turbo and made the final table out of 172 entries ($49). Just missed the money in the $1K NLHE Fast Mini Mystery Bounty but I picked up $6 in bounties. Busted the $750 GTD NLHE Deepstack Super Turbo, then took a bit of a flier on the $55 buy-in (all my buy-ins so far we’re $11 or less) $5K NLHE Fast Mystery Bounty, but only made it half-way through the field.

Shortly after the tournament began, one of the floor people pulled the chair out of seat 3 and maneuvered a fancier chair into place. Then Mike Matusow showed up and pointed a stick at the table and said “What’s your name?”

View from Table 53, Seat 1.

“Uh, me?” I managed to get out, not recognizing the box on the end of the stick as a camera.

“Yeah.”

“Uh, Darrel,” I said, using all the wit assigned to me at birth. Matusow then went around the table getting peoples’ names and said it would be online (still don’t have any idea where or if, so you can’t see me making a doofus of myself).

A repeat cash in HORSE was not to be. I don’t believe I ever managed to get above the starting stack, and a guy on my immediate right had me pipped on every hand where I thought I might be a winner, including one hard-contested Razz hand where he rivered a wheel on my A2346. Just could not beat him.

I got the full dose of the Mouth, more than four hours of complaints about how he’d only won 24 hands in the series up to that point, and some reactionary politics when Jeff Lisandro joined the table at the other end.

Back to the Flamingo after five-and-half hours, where David and I had a late dinner at Virgil’s on the LINQ Promenade. It was still warm outside according to the thermostat on the wall next to us.

THURsday

Back to the smaller stakes. Orleans had another $30K guarantee at 11am and I headed that way even though it was just Hold’em. It had a very late end to registration—about seven hours—and I only lasted about 4, but I did see one of those crazy hands that crop up all over Las Vegas during the summer: a four-way all-in pre flop that pitted jacks against queens against kings against aces. The aces somehow held to scoop.

I texted Brad to verify my decision on whether to play the Razz tournament that had just started or get back in the $30K with just 20bb. Razz it was. I figured it was time to start drinking.

Razz was another strike for me. Four more hours, made it through about half the field of 199. But overall a pretty pleasant experience. One of the players from my HORSE table who’d been sitting on the other side of Matusow was there, and I met the gregarious Carlos, who introduced me to an online group of mixed-game players. So, not an entirely fruitless day at the Orleans.

David had some free drink coupons as a valued Caesars Diamond member and had already picked up a Bailey’s slushy at O’Shea’s on the promenade, so we headed over to get three more. When we got back to the room, I jumped into a $55 $3K GTD NLHE PKO 6-Max Turbo, got a couple bounties then knocked out and re-entered to place 6th of 84. Not a huge profit, but something. Played a $150 GTD PLO 6-Max Turbo and a $500 GTD PLO PKO 6-Max, then min-cashed (17/158) a $1K GTD NLHE before I went to bed.

FRIday

My flight (and David’s) didn’t leave until after 8pm. I’d noted that when Brad made the final tables of his South Point events, it was six-ish, so I figured that if I made it to the money in their morning event I should have just enough time to get to the airport.

Reasonably certain I got angled on my second hand when a player tossed in 5100 (still at 100/200) with a “Did I do that?” speech. I shoved my A9s and he had AQ. It was back to registration.

Four and a half hours in with 18bb, I squeezed from the SB with A7s over there lines. One of the limps was 99, he called, I hit the ace on the turn. When I texted back to Brad about the hand, his response was “Stop it!!! You’re killing me”.

By the time we got to the bubble at 36 players, my stack was down to 18bb, but that was still 150% of the average. It wasn’t exactly a leisurely structure.

I mostly folded for the next 40 minutes, drifting down to 11bb—though that was still above the chip average. Then just before the break, I picked up TT on the button, two short stacks before me shove, and I swoop in to the pot against a lower pair and a ragged ace. I hit a set on the flop to seal the deal.

Next orbit after the break, QQ on the button and I double up to 700K after making a full house against T9s.

The inflection point for me was another 20 minutes on, about six hours into the game, when I 3-bet QT of clubs and the table chip leader shoved. It folded back to me and I thought about it for longer than usual, then put my trust in the Portland Nuts and called against AK. Two clubs on the flop and another on the turn, and I was over a million chips.

We were still at 14 players and it was creeping closer to the time I was going to have to start thinking about making it to the airport. Action went fast, though, and in just ten minutes we were down to the final table. Half an hour later, we were at 5. We had a break and an ICM chop was proposed. There was a little tussling about who’d win the seat into South Point’s Tournament of Champions, but the rules said it had to go to the person with the most chips at the time of any deal and that they’d penalize people if they thought there was any dumping going on.

Anyway, it took a few minutes to run the numbers. I came out on top by just 0.3%. Plus, I got the ToC seat that I can’t play because I’ve got a thing in Portland that day. The list of eligible players was just posted, with 158 names on it. There’s $50K guaranteed with $10K up top and 60 places paid, so the EV’s pretty high to start with and with people like myself not able to make it, even better.

It didn’t come anywhere close to wiping out the losses from the first five days, but it did stanch the bleeding a bit so the losses were basically down the cost of the two bracelet events.

Other Poker for June

The week before Vegas, I just played a couple of the Beaverton Quarantine home games, then three more in the weeks after I got back. They were a complete loss.

The only other live poker for the month was the Portland Meadows NLHE 50/50 Bounty, where half the buy-in goes into your bounty. I came in late and watched a guy who’d open-jammed twice with 40bb. I raised the queen-ten on my first playable hand and he jammed a third time. I snapped it off and doubled up versus nines. Didn’t quite make it to the money, but I did take a bounty.

My new poker venue is a private online club with nothing but mixed games, 1- or 2-table fields for the most part, running six or seven tournaments like Razz, Badugi, 5-Card PLO, Stud8, 8-Game, PLO8, 2-7 Triple Draw, and more. I love it, though I’m only 1 for 10 so far.

#PNWPokerLeaderboard: I’m Not Human, I’m a Mutant

For more than seven years now, I’ve been running the Pacific Northwest Poker Leaderboard in one form or another. First as a series of write-ups of manually-selected standout players from Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, and eventually as a list that included everyone who fit my criteria and including players from British Columbia, Alberta, and Alaska.

Throughout that time, the Leaderboard was made possible by a certain amount of automation. I wrote a routine that pulled in data from The Hendon Mob‘s state and province leaderboards, then stuffed the player and income data into a database which allowed me to compare earnings over time to see who’d made the most money since the last Leaderboard.

The Leaderboard suffered only one major snag (apart from the amount of time it still took to put things together after the routine had done its thing), a few years ago when THM slightly modified the code of the leaderboard pages and the routine choked. I had to make a decision then whether to spend the time to figure out how to fix it or not. I did it.

Then last year, I kind of ran out of steam myself as I was playing less and less often. I said it was the end, then lit it back up at the first of the year.

But I think we’ve reached the end of the journey for real this time. Not because I’ve given up on poker, I was just down in Las Vegas (as you can see above), not because I don’t want to talk about all the people cashing big-time in the first month of this year’s WSOP. Nope, it’s a CAPTCHA issue. Hendon Mob has implemented a tool to prevent robots from crawling their site scraping information, as is their right. It’s been a fun project, but there’s no way forward. My apologies to anyone who was hoping to see their 2024 WSOP cashes represented.

Theme From… — April 2024

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Another month of nothing good to report! 14 shots at the Ignition Casino NLHE Jackpot Sit-and-Go, just 3 cashes and none of them any higher payout than 2x buy-in. I got a couple of tickets from America’s Cardroom for satellites and a ticket from Ignition for their $2500 GTD Freeroll and nothing came of those.

Just a min-cash in one of three Beaverton Quarantine home game bounty tournaments (and a bare bounty in another), plus three bricks in non-bounty tournaments. Thankfully, those aren’t expensive.

After a five-month hiatus, I went back to the Final Table $20K GTD NLHE First Friday tournament, where I only made it though half the field, but had a very nice interaction about the blog with Brian Barker, who won a quarter-million in a World Poker Tour tournament last fall (as well as a bunch of other stuff). It was a fun evening, but too short.

Capped off the month trying to catch the lightning in a bottle at the Portland Meadows Big Bet Mix 6-Max. I’d taken second somehow last fall but only made it to 25th this time, doing quite well sitting with the likes of Jeremy Harkin and Joe Brandenburg, then less well sitting with my nemesis Butcher.

Next week is the Portland Meadows Poker Classic, of which I’m planning to play the Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday events. (Wheel of Chaos, baby!) Not sure what the rest of May holds, but I’m just over a month out from my trip to the World Series of Poker.

Pacific Northwest Poker Leaderboard

Key to the Leaderboard

  • Name and home town (according to the player’s Hendon Mob profile).
  • The player’s most recent ranking in the PNW Poker Leaderboard in italics. If this is their first time on the Leaderboard, an em dash (—)
  • Their new standing in bold, preceded by the pound sign (#).
  • Their change in status on the Leaderboard (with an arrow indicating up or down), or a black club (♣) if this is their first appearance.
  • For each of the tournaments that are being recognized in this Leaderboard:
    • The name and link to the Hendon Mob listing for that tournament.
    • The player’s finishing position in the tournament and the number of entries.
    • The tournament prize pool in US dollars.
Tyler Panas (Calgary, Alberta)
—
#2193
♣
Ace Casino Calgary Grande Poker Series #9 NLHE Main Event
2nd of 257 entries, $179.9K prize pool
Erik Backlund (Calgary, Alberta)
#6281
#2029
➧
+4252
Ace Casino Calgary Grande Poker Series #9 NLHE Main Event
1st of 257 entries, $179.9K prize pool
Rahul Karpy (Portland, Oregon)
#5285
#1977
➧
+3308
The Lodge $400K GTD NLHE Mini Monster
6th of 3505 entries, $865.7K prize pool
Andrew Goosen (Port Coquitlam, British Columbia)
—
#1845
♣
WSOPC Calgary #9 NLHE Monster Stack
2nd of 1380 entries, $339.4K prize pool
Brian Monigold (Spokane Valley, Washington)
#7098
#1670
➧
+5428
WPT Prime Voyage #7 $500K GTD NLHE
5th of 968 entries, $968K prize pool
Steven Williams (Hood River, Oregon)
#685
#564
➧
+121
Peppermill Spring Poker Palooza #1 $100K NLHE Mini Main Event
2nd of 330 entries, $181.5K prize pool
Taran Parmar (Edmonton, Alberta)
#956
#471
➧
+485
France Poker Series Monte Carlo #13 NLHE High Roller
6th of 682 entries, $2.5M prize pool
Ali Razzaq (Edmonton, Alberta)
#516
#427
➧
+89
Ace Casino Calgary Grande Poker Series #9 NLHE Main Event
3rd of 257 entries, $179.9K prize pool
Alejandro Madrigal (Umatilla, Oregon)
#542
#383
➧
+159
Peppermill Spring Poker Palooza #26 $300K NLHE Main Event
2nd of 409 entries, $368.1K prize pool
Landen Lucas (Portland, Oregon)
#266
#242
➧
+24
WPT Prime Voyage #4 NLHE Championship
12th of 293 entries, $1.3M prize pool
Stuart Young (Portland, Oregon)
#293
#235
➧
+58
WPT SHRPS #26 $2M GTD NLHE Mid-Series Showdown Deep Stack
7th of 4489 entries, $2.3M prize pool
Landon Brown (Kent, Washington)
#312
#194
➧
+118
Venetian DeepStack Showdown #58 $200K GTD NLHE UltimateStack
1st of 840 entries, $277.2K prize pool
Wynn Signature Series $500K GTD NLHE
2nd of 1180 entries, $607.7K prize pool
Yunkyu Song (Camas, Washington)
#160
#115
➧
+45
PGT Texas Poker Open $2M GTD NLHE Main Event
4th of 735 entries, $2.2M prize pool
Clemen Deng (Portland, Oregon)
#64
#50
➧
+14
WPT SHRPS #64 $1M GTD NLHE Deep Stack
6th of 104 entries, $1M prize pool
PGT Texas Poker Open #4 NLHE High Roller
1st of 49 entries, $245K prize pool
Maxwell Young (Oregon)
#22
#22
➧
0
Bicycle Winnin’ o the Green #43 NLHE Mini Mega Millions IV
4th of 3163 entries, $897.8K prize pool
Dylan Linde (Coeur D’Alene, Idaho)
#4
#4
➧
0
WPT Voyage #17 NLHE High Roller Turbo
1st of 81 entries, $781.5K prize pool
PGT US Poker Open #1 NLHE
3rd of 116 entries, $580K prize pool
WPT SHRPS #58 $3M GTD NLHE Championship
1st of 1869 entries, $5.9M prize pool

What’s That Spell?…Go To Hell! — March 2024

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Another month in the red, though I briefly had hopes for this one.

No need to recap all of the thrill of min-victory and the agony of defeat at the Chinook Winds PacWest Poker Classic in the middle of the month, it’s all right here if you want to read about it.

POSTS on the 2024 PacWest Poker Classic

  1. St. Paddy’s Eve
  2. Two Min-Cashes Per Day
  3. Satellite Unlocked
  4. Cashless
  5. More Like Big Ow
  6. Testing My Limits
  7. Three Bounty Problem
  8. Don’t Dream It

I cashed 7 out of 17 Ignition Casino NLHE Jackpot Sit-and-Go tournaments, with just one of the winners being a 5x payout, which means…exactly $0 profit.

Because I spent an entire week at Chinook Winds, no other live play for me, though I did play five Beaverton Quarantine games via PokerStars Home Games, min-cashing a 10-player NLHE game and winning a NLHE Bounty tournament with three bounties (including my own) for a whopping 320% ROI. Not enough to cover my losses at the PacWest series!

What II’m looking at in the month(s) ahead:

  • Maybe this week’s Final Table First Friday $20K GTD NLHE.
  • Possibly the Last Frontier NLHE Freezeout on Sunday, April 7th.
  • The Final Table $30K GTD NLHE on April 27th.
  • Or the Portland Meadows Big Bet Mix April 28th.
  • There’s a whole bunch of fun coming up May 6th–12th at the Portland Meadows Poker Classic, though I’m going to have to skip their High Roller because I’ve got tickets to see Michelle Wolf. And I can only do the evening games because, you know…job.
  • I’ve booked my flight to the WSOP already. Got a lot of $2K and $5K satellites on my menu, along with HORSE, Seven Card Stud, and Big O,

Pacific Northwest Poker Leaderboard

Due to some fast reporting by the Chinook Winds tournament officials, this edition of the Leaderboard includes the big results from the recent PacWest Poker Classic!

Key to the Leaderboard

  • Name and home town (according to the player’s Hendon Mob profile).
  • The player’s most recent ranking in the PNW Poker Leaderboard in italics. If this is their first time on the Leaderboard, an em dash (—)
  • Their new standing in bold, preceded by the pound sign (#).
  • Their change in status on the Leaderboard (with an arrow indicating up or down), or a black club (♣) if this is their first appearance.
  • For each of the tournaments that are being recognized in this Leaderboard:
    • The name and link to the Hendon Mob listing for that tournament.
    • The player’s finishing position in the tournament and the number of entries.
    • The tournament prize pool in US dollars.
Ryan Olin (Huslia, Alaska)
—
#2634
♣
Wynn Millions Poker Series $3M GTD NLHE Championship
20th of 1180 entries, $3.7M prize pool
Jonathan Erickson (Salem, Oregon)
#8040
#2557
➧
+5483
Chinook Winds PacWest Poker Classic #17 $40K GTD NLHE Big Bounty
1st of 286 entries, $116.6K prize pool
Ryan Peterson (Albany, Oregon)
#7371
#2262
➧
+5109
Chinook Winds PacWest Poker Classic #19 $225K GTD NLHE Main Event
3rd of 441 entries, $306.9K prize pool
Khoa Ngo (Lakewood, Washington)
#2821
#1729
➧
+1092
Little Creek Spring South Sound Series #7 NLHE Main Event
1st of 82 entries, $69.5K prize pool
Jerry O’Keefe (Bend, Oregon)
#6205
#1534
➧
+4671
Chinook Winds PacWest Poker Classic #19 $225K GTD NLHE Main Event
2nd of 441 entries, $306.9K prize pool
Jolnar Teliani (Edmonton, Alberta)
#2160
#1194
➧
+966
Station Poker Classic Regina #4 NLHE
2nd of 282 entries, $208.8K prize pool
Barry Frey (Medicine Hat, Alberta)
#3413
#1128
➧
+2285
Station Poker Classic Regina #4 NLHE
1st of 282 entries, $208.8K prize pool
Andrew Brunette (Woodland, Washington)
#1651
#1109
➧
+542
Chinook Winds PacWest Poker Classic #1 $100K GTD NLHE
2nd of 629 entries, $175.1K prize pool
Wille Scott (Courtenay, British Columbia)
—
#1106
♣
WSOPC Calgary #14 NLHE High Roller
2nd of 346 entries, $506.3K prize pool
Joe Gates (Burns, Oregon)
#1919
#1092
➧
+827
WSOPC North Carolina #2 $850K GTD NLHE
5th of 3180 entries, $1M prize pool
Steven Boyd (Albany, Oregon)
#1537
#999
➧
+538
Portland Meadows Oregon State Championship NLHE
2nd of 339 entries, $203.3K prize pool

Boyd cracks the top 1,000 with a cash back in December that—ahem—didn’t get reported to The Hendon Mob until relatively recently.

Kale Satta-Hutton (Portland, Oregon)
#2094
#870
➧
+1224
Chinook Winds PacWest Poker Classic #19 $225K GTD NLHE Main Event
1st of 441 entries, $306.9K prize pool
Antonio Ma (Calgary, Alberta)
—
#682
♣
WPT Rolling Thunder $100K GTD NLHE Bounty Confidential
2nd of 133 entries, $144K prize pool

Ma comes into the Leaderboard as a new entry, though he has another, larger score at WSOPC Thunder Valley in January.

Jason Heang (Edmonton, Alberta)
—
#669
♣
Station Poker Classic Regina #4 NLHE
3rd of 282 entries, $208.8K prize pool

This is Heang’s debut on the Leaderboard, though he has a couple other cashes that would have qualified him last year when I wasn’t keeping the Leaderboard updated.

Sterling Lopez (Anchorage, Alaska)
#502
#425
➧
+77
MSPT MIssouri State Poker Championship Series #2 $100K GTD NLHE Mystery Bounty
3rd of 984 entries, $196.8K prize pool
Aaron Quon (Richmond, British Columbia)
#587
#411
➧
+176
Station Poker Classic Regina #5 NLHE
2nd of 309 entries, $311.7K prize pool
Scott Lake (Bremerton, Washington)
#1034
#404
➧
+630
Aria/PokerGO PGT Mixed Games #6 Triple Draw Mix
3rd of 47 entries, $470K prize pool

Lake had a cash the previous day in the Triple Stud Mix event, but not enough ROI to qualify for the Leaderboard.

Yunkyu Song (Camas, Washington)
#231
#160
➧
+71
WPT Rolling Thunder #19 NLHE Main Event
4th of 458 entries, $1.4M prize pool
Andrew Rodgers (Anchorage, Alaska)
#111
#86
➧
+25
Wynn Millions $500K GTD NLHE
1st of 748 entries, $725.5K prize pool
Kyle Ho (Burnaby, British Columbia)
#71
#72
➧
-1
Station Poker Classic Regina #3 NLHE
2nd of 253 entries, $151.1K prize pool
Chad Wassmuth (Lewiston, Washington)
#75
#68
➧
+7
Wynn Millions $1.5M GTD NLHE Mystery Bounty
2nd of 1272 entries, $1.8M prize pool
Kao Saechao (Damascus, Oregon)
#41
#42
➧
-1
Chinook Winds PacWest Poker Classic #1 $100K GTD NLHE
1st of 629 entries, $175.1K prize pool
Mike Kinney (Sand Point, Idaho)
#51
#39
➧
+12
WPT Rolling Thunder #19 NLHE Main Event
2nd of 458 entries, $1.4M prize pool
Maxwell Young (Oregon)
#23
#22
➧
+1
WPT Rolling Thunder #13 $250K GTD NLHE NorCal Jacked Stack
1st of 264 entries, $264K prize pool
Adam Hendrix (Anchorage, Alaska)
#8
#6
➧
+2
WSOPC North Carolina #12 NLHE Main Event
5th of 1659 entries, $2.5M prize pool
Aria/PokerGO PGT PLO Series #1 PLO
8th of 132 entries, $660K prize pool
WSOPC Las Vegas #15 NLHE High Roller
1st of 81 entries, $243K prize pool
Chris Brewer (Eugene, Oregon)
#2
#2
➧
0
Triton Super High Roller Jeju #7 NLHE 7-Max Mystery Bounty
6th of 124 entries, $3.8M prize pool
Triton Super High Roller Jeju #11 NLHE Main Event
8th of 139 entries, $21.6M prize pool
Seth Davies (Bend, Oregon)
#1
#1
➧
0
Triton Super High Roller Jeju #10 NLHE Turbo Bounty Quattro
3rd of 82 entries, $3.7M prize pool
Triton Super High Roller Jeju #16 NLHE Short Deck Ante Only
3rd of 33 entries, $1.3M prize pool
Aria/PokerGO PGT PLO Series #9 PLO Championship
1st of 72 entries, $1.8M prize pool

Davies had six other cashes in the Triton Jeju series (for a total of eight cashes in seventeen events) each large enough to put most players’ career winnings to shame, but their ROI was less than 400%, so they do not appear on the Leaderboard.

2024 Chinook Winds PacWest Poker Classic, Don’t Dream It

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More in This Series

  1. St. Paddy’s Eve
  2. Two Min-Cashes Per Day
  3. Satellite Unlocked
  4. Cashless
  5. More Like Big Ow
  6. Testing My Limits
  7. Three Bounty Problem
  8. Don’t Dream It

Event #19 $235,000 Guaranteed NL Hold’em Main Event

This was the big one. I’d won my satellite ticket early in the week, but that was the last tournament cash I’d had, so if there was a profit to be made on the trip, this was likely my last chance.

We started off with 70K in chips, I was in seat 4, with theater impresario Jerry Mouawad on my right. I played fairly cautiously, still sitting around starting stack at the second break about four hours in.

My only substantial gain came about a little after that, when I raised with jacks, called a reraise from a short stack, flopped top set, then check-raised him enough to almost put him all in. He jammed with aces, my set held, and I was up over 100K.

We passed $300K in the prize pool before the end of registration (and dinner break). Seven hours in, I turned the nut flush against a flopped set and made it up to my peak of 160K.

That was above average at the time, but I lost chips and ground over the next couple of hours. Jerry and the player on my left both climbed into the 300-400K range while I slipped down to 100K, which was still about 35bb as we approached the 10-hour mark, then I picked up queens on the button, open-raised, and was re-raised by the big stack on my left in the big blind. Squeeze? Better hand? There are only 12 better card combos than a pair of queens. I jammed, the big stack called with kings, and that was the end of this series for me!

2024 Chinook Winds PacWest Poker Classic, Three Bounty Problem

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More in This Series

  1. St. Paddy’s Eve
  2. Two Min-Cashes Per Day
  3. Satellite Unlocked
  4. Cashless
  5. More Like Big Ow
  6. Testing My Limits
  7. Three Bounty Problem
  8. Don’t Dream It

Event #17 $40,000 Guaranteed NL Hold’em Big Bounty

I intended to play this cautiously. Not going recklessly after bounties; from experience I know there are a lot of them to gather up toward the end.

Things kicked off pretty fast. The table next to us had two all-in hands right away; Jerry Mouwad knocked a player out on our table, all in the first 15 minutes. There was another elimination from the table by the end of the second level.

Got a couple snorts of derision from the other players when I open-folded aces from the small blind on a paired board with three spades by the turn, when the big blind player in the hand bet out 11bb. Establishing the image of the tight old player with a They Might Be Giants sweatshirt. “Why is the snowman burning money?” asked one of the dealers.

My stack was up to only about 35K from the 27K starting stack by the end of the third level, then 40K at the end of Level 6 when registration ended. I kept plugging away through the next two hours to the next break, taking three hands out of four at one point, but still no bounties.

My big break came about six hours in when I raised, from UTG, got two calls, then 3-bet by a played in late position for about half my stack. I had suited ace-king and put all 58K in the middle. He called with queens. King and ten on the flop, but he picked up a set of queens. Then a river jack gave me Broadway. “Did you think I wasn’t going to call?” he asked after the hand was over, which seemed a little odd. Still didn’t get a bounty chip (aside from my own) until half an hour later after a table change.

I’d had pretty good luck with making sets of tens, so when I got them in the small blind at the end of the sixth hour, I was hopeful. An early position player raised and was shoved on by a shortish stack in middle position for 15bb. I called the all-in, then the opening player shoved as well, for another 15bb. At the time I was still over 80b, and called. The EP player had AK, the MP player had AT, and the board ran out to give them a wheel straight.

Another table change and we were down to 78 players. There were a couple of very short stacks and I managed to pick up two bounties before dinner break, making it up to 175K (44bb) for my high point before losing about 12bb after laying down a couple hands (including kings) after the flop.

We went to dinner break with 54 players left, two tables to the money. 33bb for me. I cashed out the three bounties I’d picked up, then zipped up to the 60s Cafe & Diner at the top of the hill to grab a burger and a boozy shake. I sort of had to wolf things down to get back in time, but perhaps I should have eaten more leisurely and not worried about getting back for the first — or more importantly, the second — hand. I had 25bb on the button and picked up ace-king of diamonds. One of the big stacks on the table opened for just over 2bb, and another player called. I ripped in my stack, which I probably didn’t need to do, though I think it was the right move, just at the wrong time, because after some thought, the original raiser called with kings, which held, and I was out.

Here are some final table payouts for the series as of mid-day Friday. Friday night’s Main Event Mega-Satellite paid out 30 vouchers, double the guarantee.