Short Circuit

Nothing big in my poker world since the Deepstacks tournament (at least not big and good). The next weekend, I made it into the top four of a $10K at The Final Table, but then went out to the Wildhorse Fall Poker Round-Up and busted relatively early out of both the Seniors tournament and the Turbo.

Three hands into the Turbo tournament, a player in late position went all-in over a raise. The big blind tanked for a couple of minutes, saying he didn’t want to go out so early by making the call. He finally flipped over [ax ax] and people started laughing, but I could see that he was really agonized about it. The initial all-in showed [kx kx], the [kx] hit on the flop, and the big blind’s fears were realized. He left and everyone was marveling at how long it took for him to call, but I could sympathize even though I would have called it in an instant.

My third tournament at the Round-Up was the High Roller, which I should have passed on in favor of the HORSE game. It was waaay outside my bankroll (as was the Deepstack), but the structure was inviting and the number of players expected made the expected median payouts worthwhile.

As usual, I went on a downward swing at first. There were a number of high-end Northwest players in the tournament, with quite a few from the Seattle area. After losing several thousand chips in the first couple rounds, I recovered to better than starting stack with a couple of good hands, then caught a pair of queens on the button and popped up a multi-way limped pot, still getting four callers because the blinds were pretty low.

The flop ran out [qd 9d 4d]. Needless to say, I didn’t have a diamond in my hand. Action checked to me and I raised to about half pot, for 3,200. This time there were some folds, until it got around to the older guy in seat 10, who re-raised me. I was pretty certain he had the [ad]. If I was right about that, there was a less than 25% chance that he had a made flush. So I popped it all in with my set and he called with [ad td]. The board didn’t pair, I was cut down to a couple thousand chips, which went in with [as js] and ran into [ax ax] a few hands later.

The holidays have slowed down the schedule a little bit, but I did pop down to San Diego for a few days of the WSOP Circuit stop at Rincon. I missed both Tahoe and Vancouver—which I could have easily driven to—because of schedules, but I managed to get a ticket to San Diego for $20 and some frequent flyer miles, a cheap car, and a decent rate at Harrah’s. No cash, but I made it halfway through the field in my first ring event, and three-quarters of the way through the second and third, including the 6-Max (which I have to say is even more fun live than it is online). Got knocked out of the 6-Max shoving [ax qx] pre-flop over a raise and (eventually) getting called by [tx tx]. Lost the last one calling with [8x 8x] against [ax qx] that had paired the queen on the flop; just a bad call. Hoping to make it to Choctaw in January for better results.