Portland Players Club Player of the Month High Hand Jackpot (7,000 chips)
I made four-of-a-kind with a hand in March at PPC, which got me an extra 1,000 bonus for this game. With the 3,000 pre-add-on, I was starting with 11,000 chips.
Picked up a free note-taking tool for my iPhone called MomentDiary which I came to like quite a lot during this tournament. The plan was to try it out at the Poker Pro Challenge but their ban on electronic devices kept me from using it. The great thing about it for poker notation is that it timestamps each entry. Haven’t found a way to batch delete a bunch of notes yet, though; I made more than 75 notes in tournaments on April Fool’s Day.
Won the first hand with J
Almost immediately after that, I picked up K
I more than made up for that fold playing 4
My next hand was 4
Fifteen minutes into the game, I was up about 4,000 chips. I raised to 225 with 6
Another 4
Twenty minutes had passed since my last chip count and I was still at 15,125.
I raised to 300 with J
Lost a little ground with Q
The Butcher Q
Holding J
I was knocked back to 12,350, but managed to make a bunch on the last hand before the break with J
Starting back up after the break, I saw the flop as BB with 7
I folded myself after calling 300 with A
About twenty minutes into the second segment of the tournament I was holding 21,800, including the 5,000 add-on from the break.
I put out another 1,100 on A
Another J
Raised to 800 with J
My stack was up to 22,650. I was heavily invested in jack-ten combinations in this game and made two pair on the turn just a couple minutes later on a board with a potential Broadway straight on it. Pushing all-in on a 6,000 post-turn bet cost me over 16,000 when the other guy had the straight and I failed to hit a full house on the river. Down to 6,425.
Ten minutes later I pushed all-in with J
Two hours and fifteen minutes. -100% ROI. 28th of 41 entries.
Portland Players Club Pot Limit Omaha Hi-Lo (10,000 chips)
I don’t get to play nearly enough Omaha tournaments, and I’m a real sucker for the split-pot game. It’s definitely my preferred game over high-only. I’ve had some success with it in live limit cash games and had made the final table in a couple tournaments, but never managed to cash before this game. All I can say is it’s hard to take notes on.
Got a 1,000 chip bonus for this game for whatever reason, so I was starting with 11,000 on the table.
About ten minutes in, I played A
My 5
I called a raise to 1,100 pre-flop with Q
I lost a big hand I didn’t manage to record, and was cut in half to 11,575 near the end of the first hour of play.
Then came the hand that changed everything. A
Even with the big stack, I added on for another 5,000 chips, one of the best decisions I made in this game, as you’ll see.
Just after the break, a Q
The two largest stacks in the tournament were me and another player at my table, and we got into it with both tables five-handed. He pushed hard with a straight and full house draw but I hit quad nines and knocked him out, putting my stack up to 108,400 and more than a third of the chips in play.
Knocked out another player with A
By break 2, I’d hit 140,000.
A big pot with 2
In less than ten minutes, I missed two draws for a Broadway straight and a flush that cost me a total of 22,500. Then I made a set of queens on a flop and called an all-in from B, who had K
Ten minutes later I was still bleeding chips and down to 74,500. I managed to take one hand and bet people off my flush, then lost with two pair against a full house and didn’t hit my low. I hit the same straight as a another player and chopped a pot that would have been nice to take in toto, then flopped another straight and was all-in but was outdrawn by a flush that took all but 6,000 of my chips. It was just twenty-five minutes since I’d had 58% of the chips in play and I was down to one big blind. If I had skipped buying the add-on at the first break, I’d probably have busted out already—at best I would have only had 1,000 chips.
The next ten minutes were a blur. I caught some amazing cards, including a couple of high pairs and and managed to double up at least three times. In eight minutes, I was back up to 84,000 chips, then I knocked out B short of the money and hit the last break with 102,000.
Not long after the break was over, we managed to get it down to heads-up. I was back on top with about a 40,000 chip advantage but we chopped the top two positions evenly and called the game at four hours.
Four hours. +272% ROI. Chopped 2 ways with 15 entries.