{"id":403,"date":"2011-12-24T16:40:32","date_gmt":"2011-12-25T00:40:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mutantpoker.com\/?p=403"},"modified":"2011-12-24T16:50:23","modified_gmt":"2011-12-25T00:50:23","slug":"santas-on-his-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mutantpoker.com\/?p=403","title":{"rendered":"Santa’s On His Way"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Final Table $5,000 Guarantee \u2014 $500 Santa Bounty (7,000 chips)<\/strong><\/p>\n

‘Twas the night before Christmas Eve<\/em>
\nAnd all through Portland<\/em>
\nThere was not a poker game<\/em>
\nWith a guarantee of ten grand…<\/em><\/p>\n

Encore’s doors would be shut Christmas Eve, so they weren’t running their $10K game this week. Aces replaced their Friday night $10K with a $50 buy-in with $500 added for first place. Final Table’s Friday night game was the same buy-in, but with a $5,000 guarantee; instead of $500 for first, they had five $100 bounties on selected players. I had to go for the Final Table guarantee, not so much because I thought there wouldn’t be $5,000 in the pot at Aces, but because I figured the field size would be larger because of the guarantee. I don’t know if I was wrong, but in any case, they were already open to ten tables when I signed up, and the eventual field size was more than 130.<\/p>\n

I started off the game at the same table I’d played for one of the FT morning $1K Guarantees, with the aggressive M immediately on my right and even more aggressive N two spots to his<\/em> right. As often is the case M built up a good-sized stack by going over the top from position, but as is almost as often the case when I’ve played with either of them, they both busted out and rebought before the first break and they were gone before the second.<\/p>\n

I got chopped down in the middle of the first segment, then managed to double up to just over starting stack before break one. By break two, I was at 40K, more than twice the chip average.<\/p>\n

The third segment was tough. I took a couple of tumbles, doubling up all-ins and getting knocked down to 10,000 chips. A table change brought me into the company of a real peach of a player who seemed to pick one target at each table he was at to denigrate. It didn’t bother me so much\u2014although I did have to check myself a couple of times from making snarky comments\u2014but the woman who was his next target after me was pretty upset. He seemed to get ruder as I stacked back up to 40,000 and picked up one of the $100 bounties. Average at third break was 31,400.<\/p>\n

Moved into overdrive in the fourth segment and knocked out another player in a race , putting me up to 140,000 (of a total of 1,600,000) chips with 25 players left. Six-and-a-half hours after we started, we were in the money (17th got a bubble payment of $100). AN hour later we made the final table with ten players.<\/p>\n

I’d made a big misstep not long before the final table. I was in the SB with A on my left. I had K<\/span>x<\/span><\/span> T<\/span>x<\/span><\/span><\/span> and raised to 16,000 at 4,000\/8,000\/500 after action folded to me. She called and the flop came A<\/span>x<\/span><\/span> 7<\/span>x<\/span><\/span> A<\/span>x<\/span><\/span><\/span>. I checked and she bet at it, the board eventually had A<\/span>x<\/span><\/span> 7<\/span>x<\/span><\/span> A<\/span>x<\/span><\/span> 7<\/span>x<\/span><\/span> 9<\/span>x<\/span><\/span><\/span> and there was 50,000 of my chips in the pot. I didn’t think she had the ace and thought I might have the best kicker but….<\/p>\n

Blinds were eating through the stacks at the final table. A number of people were pressuring the big stack to make a chop; I gave him my advice to fight to the end. I was down to 51,000 chips with blinds at 10,000\/20,000\/3,000. Definitely the short stack at the table at that point. I picked up K<\/span>x<\/span><\/span> T<\/span>x<\/span><\/span><\/span> again and shoved from UTG+2 and almost got away with it. Action folded to BB, who thought about it for a long time, then called me with 5<\/span>x<\/span><\/span> 7<\/span>x<\/span><\/span><\/span>. She had a 33% of winning and managed to hit it, pulling out a nine-high straight.<\/p>\n

A little birdie tells me that it went on for a little longer after I left, then they chopped it for what would have been just over $1,000 each.<\/p>\n

Forgot to take a picture!<\/p>\n

Eight hours. +143% ROI. 10th of 131 players.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Final Table $5,000 Guarantee \u2014 $500 Santa Bounty (7,000 chips) ‘Twas the night before Christmas Eve And all through Portland There was not a poker game With a guarantee of ten grand… Encore’s doors would be shut Christmas Eve, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_eb_attr":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,49,110,4],"tags":[170,195,54,194,83,147,117],"class_list":["post-403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-poker","category-live-games","category-no-limit-holdem","category-tournaments","tag-10k","tag-5k","tag-aces-players-club","tag-christmas","tag-encore-club","tag-guarantee","tag-the-final-table"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1t0pn-6v","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mutantpoker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mutantpoker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mutantpoker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mutantpoker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mutantpoker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=403"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mutantpoker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":405,"href":"https:\/\/www.mutantpoker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403\/revisions\/405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mutantpoker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mutantpoker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mutantpoker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}