Less than a Chip and a Chair

As the World Series of Poker draws near I am trying to get in to larger tournaments so I can practice maneuvering larger fields. It’s one thing to play in a tournament and do well, but if it only has 20-40 players, or even a couple hundred, that’s vastly different from trying to maneuver through a field of over 3000 players.

With that in mind I qualified for Full Tilt’s Sunday 750K tournament. The field in that tournament had 3626 players. The top 522 were going to make the money. You start the tournament with 3000 chips, and within 25 minutes I was down to my last 520 chips. Not good. I had KK, and when the flop was Q-5-2, the player that had pocket 5s was able to double through me. Luckily he had fewer chips than I did. It took me about an hour, but I was able to get back to the starting amount before the second break (they have a 5 minute break once an hour). I kept plugging away, and with about 775 players left I found myself involved in a big hand with one of the Full Tilt Poker Pros, Michael Craig.

If you are unfamiliar with Michael Craig, he is the author of The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King. It’s a book about a banker from Texas, Andy Beal, taking on a group of professional poker players in the richest heads up match played. He is also a co-author of the Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide.

The blinds were 200/400 and the antes were 50. In this hand I was in the small blind and Michael Craig was one off of the button (also known as the cutoff). Everyone had folded to him, and he raised to 1100. I noticed from his play here and from playing in another tournament with him that he likes to steal a lot, so when I had Kh-Th I thought I could reraise and he’d fold if he was stealing, so I repopped it to 3800. I had started the hand with about 16000 in chips. Michael called. This led me to believe he had a legitimate holding. It didn’t matter much once the flop hit though. The flop was: T-T-4. If Michael really did have a hand, I thought I could get him to put it all in if I put a bet out because a raise from there would basically commit all the chips. So I led out and bet about 4000. Michael moved all in, and I called immediately. As it turned out he was stealing, but he also hit. He had Jack-Ten! The turn card was a King, and that locked the hand up for me. Michael lost the hand, but he had me covered by 48 chips! That really sucked, since you collect your entry fee if you knock out a Full Tilt Poker Pro. It’s what happened next that was really amazing.

Michael had less than the amount of an ante at that point. Usually the smallest chip in play in a tournament is the size of the ante, but when you play online, you can have less than that since there is no need to eliminate chips from play. So officially, he had less than “a chip and a chair”. If you’re not familiar with that poker player mantra, it’s basically a poker player’s way of saying never give up. Over the next half hour he managed to work his stack back to over 20000 chips. Michael Craig keeps his own blog at Full Tilt, and he goes in to detail about the comeback here:

http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/poker-blog/2008/04/395_48_chips.php#more-1461

My screen name is Phantom Aces, so if you read Michael Craig’s blog at the link above he references me a couple times there. During his comeback I was conversing with Michael Craig using the chat function on Full Tilt’s tables, and he was explaining his reasoning in the hand to me. He had originally planned to resteal after the flop, depending on what the flop was. When it happened to give him trip Tens the plan was simple. Unfortunately, I also had trips with the bigger kicker.

I went on to cash in 145th place, which isn’t too shabby out of a field of 3626. Ironically enough, Michael Craig outlasted me, as he went from less than a chip and a chair and rode that all the way to about 65th place. Very impressive. I also need to thank Michael for the feedback he gave me.

I’m looking forward to trying to play in a couple larger tournaments. The WSOP is only a month away!!