The Final Table $1,000 Guarantee, +$200 for 1st (6,000 chips)

A very appealing tournament, with the house adding $200 to first place. How can you not afford to play it?

I came in hot a few hands into the game with 4x9x making a straight and taking a couple thousand off of one of the players at the other end of the table. Then I lost it all on the next hand hitting top pair on a Qx6x4x board when I ran into QxQx. I re-bought just as JB sat down on my right in the #1 seat.

As more players arrived, I was moved to an expansion table and settled into my normal rhythm of ups and downs. I had about twice the average stack of 8,000 at the first break, then added on for another 5,000. Post-break, post re-buys, I was slipping and down to around 12,500 when I picked up TxTx as BB and pushed over the top of a large pre-flop raise by SB. It was a race between my tens and his AxJx and he caught it on the river to knock me out.

Three hours and twenty-five minutes. -100% ROI. 24th of 38 players.

D’s Dealer’s Choice

Probably the less said about tonight the better. I did introduce a couple of new games to the mix:

• Juarez. Double-flop, double-turn, single-river Pot Limit Omaha 8OB.
• Double-Barreled Shotgun. Limit 5-Card Draw with betting rounds after the third, fourth, and fifth cards are dealt, after the draw, and after each player-selected card is exposed.

That last comes out of Poker: The Nation’s Most Fascinating Card Game, published in 1950 by The United States Playing Card Company of Cincinnati.