R-Day Minus 45

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.

I’m trying to make the most of my last couple months of poker, so while I’ve reserved my Saturday afternoons for stuff at home since Portland Meadows initiated their noon $10K GTD NLHE tournaments (at least when I haven’t been on a poker trip), I’m trying to cram them in.

I got there not long after the start of Round 1, and promptly managed to lose 6K of my 25K starting stack to a very nice Russian lady on my right when she flopped the wheel and I turned a flush draw and made two pair on the river after raising [4c 8c] under the gun.

I managed to chip back up from that and a few other bad choices with [ks 5s], after I turned the nut flush. A low fifth spade on the river made me worry for a minute about a steel wheel, until I realized that my five blocked any straight flush.

That was about it for success, though, as far as my stack went, though I did crack the table up with a joke about Neil Diamond tickets. I clung on with a couple of shoves, pulling out a chop with [ax jx] v [ax kx] when the board double-paired. I went into the third break with half the starting stack. I ran it back up to 32K, but the blinds were eating big chunks out of my stack, there were several big stacks at my new table, and I went card dead, picking up absolutely nothing where I had two cards both above eight.

Eventually, on a button raise against my big blind, I shoved 4bb with [6h 5s], got called by [ax tx] and busted on the flop. Out 32nd place, 17 from the money.