September was a busy month around Mutant Poker Tower, but not with poker. After my decent run at the Final Table $20K at the end of August, I only had few opportunities to play for several weeks, with a non-poker out-of-town trip to the coast over the closing weekend of the Chinook Winds Fall Poker Classic.
Trying to reclaim my status in Big O from the 2023 championship at Portland Meadows, I busted out in just 35 minutes from their Summer Send-Off Big O on Labor Day weekend.
A week later, placed 18/20 in a Chainsaw Poker 7-Card Stud Hi-Lo. Then another week before a 7/9 finish in the Beaverton Quarantine PLO. Finally, the last Friday of the month, chopped another 9-player PLO for a grand profit of one buy-in. And that was September wrapped.
Played two Beaverton Quarantine events the first Friday of October, busting in the middle of small-field NLHE Bounty and PLO.
The Portland Meadows Main Event Series had several satellites running in the week before their $1,000 NLHE Main Event and I fired a couple of bullets into one of them, again busting mid-field.
The next week, I turned back to Chainsaw Poker and got close to the money in a PLO Hi-Lo game before min-cashing an 11-entry 7-Card Stud Hi-Lo later in the night. Then I did the same in an 8-player PLO Hi-Lo the next night.
Took a shot at the next-to-last opportunity to enter the Final Table Battle of the Belt. For a $50 entry you get a 1 in 10 chance to contest for a seat in the Mid-States Poker Tour’s $1M GTD NLHE Poker Bowl in Las Vegas in January. I made it a couple of hours, but Drew (below) got a belt and the chance for the championship. Last chance is November 15th.
After I busted out of the Battle of the Belt, I entered the afternoon Big O tournament and was having a nice time catching up with Joe Brandenberg for all of 20 minutes until I busted twice in as many hands where I had the nuts on the turn button the river.
A couple of bad showings in a Chainsaw Poker 7-Card Stud Hi-Lo (8/11) and Beaverton Quarantine PLO Hi-Lo (5/5) looked to be the last games the month, but I snuck in a Chainsaw PLO Hi-Lo and another 7-Card Stud Hi-Lo. No good in the first, but I managed to squeeze my way into the money in Stud, pushed up to the top at one point and proposed a 3-way ICM chop where the holdout (or person who missed the messages) was the short stack and the other two of us were even. Everyone would have gotten about the same with the payouts at that point, but we played on and I ended up 3rd.
That whetted my appetite for more, so the next night I jumped into a PLO Hi-Lo 6-Max where I ended up in the middle of the pack. Then, the next night there was a small 5-Card PLO 6-Max where I quickly took the lead, then knocked out the other big stack when we consolidated to a single table. I managed to keep the lead, though my heads-up challenger managed to battle back from a 7:1 disadvantage, but I took him out when we were almost even for a win.
Last-minute update: All the winning set me up for a busy Friday night. I jumped into the first Beaverton Quarantine NLHE game in the late evening, got an early lead, and after about two hours, got heads-up and we chopped the small pot. Then it was back into a PLO5 tournament with the folks from Chainsaw, but I didn’t repeat my win from the previous night. Finally (and I do mean finally for October) went back over to Quarantine and took down a 7-player PLO game.
What’s Ahead?
I haven’t been out to Wildhorse Casino for any of their series since before the pandemic, and while I’d love to go this year since I haven’t been out of town for poker since the spring, there are a few reasons I’m not going to make it to the Fall Poker Round-Up.
Portland Meadows has a $200 Big O tournament coming up the first Friday of the month; I’m a glutton for punishment, I might hit that. There’s also a NLHE Progressive Bounty at the end of the month, and those are always fun. Not going to get a chance to try to improve in their Big O Championship in December because it’s inconveniently scheduled on my wedding anniversary.