Crapped out of both the Encore Club $40K and the Final Table anniversary $50K about half-way through each. The prize pools were $48K and $75.5K, respectively, the latter of which was pretty decent for a $150 buy-in. I would have been happy to cash in either one, of course.

The $50K went along OK-ish. I rebought early on, after squeezing all-in from SB with A♣K♣ over an EP raise to 300 got three calls and a 3-bet to 2,200 from the BTN. BTN had AxAx and while I got two clubs on the board by the turn, I wasn’t able to crack the aces. I cruised along with the new stack and stayed above average for four more hours, then saw a flop of J♥9♥8♣ multi-way from SB with 7♥8♥. I should have bet to show some strength, but it was checked around to BTN (different guy, the guy with aces had busted by then) and he shoved for about half my stack. I re-shoved, he had 9xTx with no hearts, and the pair of nines held up to the river. I was down to about 20BB and out in ten more minutes.

After busting from the $50K, I went to Portland Players Club and caught their $20 Saturday Freezeout (no rebuy, no add-on). Only eight players and one payout. One guy was the father of a kid who had another stack. The kid was busy playing the earlier Big O game, his dad was talking about how great a player the kid was and as we got down to four stacks he wanted to open the number of payouts up. The dad busted, then SuperKid, and the other guy and I chopped it.

The former Aces Players Club has been re-opened and re-branded as Aces Full Players Club. I didn’t have a chance to get there the opening week, but was happy with my first excursion where I played out the full tournament and took a true first place with no chop for the first time in a while. I had a pretty massive chip lead by the time I got to HU, pushed all-in post-flop holding K♣4♠ on a 5♥6♣3♦ board and beat out A♦8♦ when 4♣ came on the river. I think the guy who took second was just happy to be there, since he’d been the smallest stack at 3-handed and the other large stack had been a bit of a dick about how good he was. I know I shouldn’t let that stuff affect me—and I don’t think it made any difference in my decisions about how to play against him—but I did have to suppress a chuckle when I knocked him out in third. And there was $80 in overlay….

Two wins in a row still didn’t make up for money sunk in the $50K. I played the PPC $1K Big O tournament later, then got out after three rebuys in 45 minutes and headed over to Encore Club for their $1K Bounty tournament.

It wasn’t a good game for me. I got top pair/top kicker in against a set early on, rebought, then struggled through the 3-table field to the final table as one of the shorter stacks. I hadn’t picked up a single bounty (difficult to do when you don’t have enough chips to knock anyone out), although I’d done damage a couple of times to people who ended up giving their bounties to someone else. I learned my lesson about not chasing bounties at the Venetian a couple of years back, though, so I wasn’t worried. I was in seat 3, biding my time for that playable hand when the guy in seat 2—someone I thought of at the time as an “older gent” though he probably doesn’t have that many years on me—reached out to pull back his cards as my second card was being pitched. It was the typical card-hits-hand-flips-an-ace scenario. A♥ in this case. I look at my cards after the dealing’s done and my bottom card is A♠, with the replacement for the other ace being a 7♣. I toss it and fume while I watch two smaller stacks get into it, with one shoving, the other re-shoving, and me in a position to call them both if I’d made a raise with, say, a pair of aces. It’s K♠J♠ against J♥T♥, a pair of tens is the winner, the smaller stack doubles through the larger, and if the bozo in seat 2 hadn’t been in such a hurry to grab the cards that he threw away pre-flop, I would have taken us down to eight players, nearly tripled my stack, and not been so vulnerable that I had to shove AxQx fifteen minutes later, going up against AxKx, catching a queen on the flop but losing to Broadway in the river and getting knocked down to less than a big blind. Fumble-fingers was gone in tenth, I was out ninth, and the guy who won the hand was chipping up rapidly.

Keep your damn, dirty hands out of the pitch.

Chinook Winds Fall Classic starts today, with a $100K Main Event this weekend, a Big O tournament tomorrow, and 6-Max and Omaha Hi-Lo on Friday. Muckleshoot’s Summer Poker Classic kicks off tomorrow, with $55K added to prize pools in four events. And the Tulalip Poker Pow Wow gets going Saturday, with a week’s worth of tournaments, 6-Max and Stud on Monday, PLO and PLO8 on Wednesday, HORSE and Crazy Pineapple on Thursday, and a Main Event next Friday and Saturday.