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 QxTx. The flop was a rainbow Tx7x3x, 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 2♠3♣. 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 Qx7x 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 2x3x. 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 J♠7♠ into a pair of aces.