The Gambler, the Card Rack, and the Jersey

As I make my final preparations for the trip to the World Series of Poker there was, over the Memorial Day weekend, the sixth of seven Cream City Poker League Events. The event has been a popular event, having been hosted over Memorial Day weekend in years past at the same location. Pete and Angie do a great job with hosting the event, and the tournament went off without a hitch. There were 19 participants. As usual, the tournament got off to a slow start. There were only two rebuys in the first three levels when participants are permitted to rebuy once if their stack is lost to another player. We only had two tables, one consisting of nine players and the other of ten. It just so happened that the table of ten was the table that had both of the rebuys, so after the rebuy period was over the table of nine was beginning to run low on chips in relation to the blinds that have to increase during play.

I was fortunate enough to be at the table that started with ten players, and I didn't find myself in trouble early with my chip stack, so things were going pretty well. One of the players was accumulating a lot of chips and playing lots of pots. He had made trips early in one hand, and then flopped a straight in another hand. Also, he was playing lots of hands and not having to show down very many of those hands so it was hard to put him on what sorts of hands with which he was coming in to pots.

Because this was the last CCPL event before the WSOP I wore my Full Tilt football jersey. It has my name on the back along with my lucky number, #11. During the first break I ran in to Mark while grabbing a beverage and he and I started discussing a hand that he had played, and I explained how I would have played it at which he commented, “That’s why you’ve got a jersey…Hey, do you mind if I wear that when we go back in from break?” I thought it would be funny so I gave Mark my jersey to wear for the remainder of the tournament. It became even funnier because he commented to me that I would have to knock him out to get my own jersey back! More on that jersey later though.

After the rebuy period ended the table of ten was the first to lose players, and to keep tables even the table of ten actually had to pull one of the players from the table of nine away, taking more chips away from them. I was sitting somewhat comfortable in chips when I got involved in a pot with an all in short stack. I held AsQs and my opponent had a small pair. I lost that and it cost me about 1/3 of my stack. The blinds were starting to creep up, and with the blinds at 200/400, my stack at about 1900, and I was one off of the button, also known as the cutoff, I elected to raise with a pair of 2s in an effort to steal the blinds. I hate 2s because if you end up playing against someone with them you know that you are either in a coin flip/race situation, or you are way behind because everything is either an overcard or overpair. I only had to get past the button and the blinds, and I hadn’t been showing down ridiculous hands so I moved in. Well, the button (also the large stack), called immediately. The blinds folded and I was shown:

Kc Kd

which left me drawing pretty slim. As the flop was dealt a deuce appeared and I was spared momentarily. The rest of the board bricked out for the Kings, and I had doubled up through the chip leader!

Shortly after that I went on an incredible, albeit brief, run of great hands. With each table at 5 players and waiting for the final table to be set, I was dealt QQ and a player moved all in ahead of me. I called, and my Queens held up against my opponent's AJ. That set the final table, where I drew seat nine. I was then dealt the following hands: Hand #1 - Ace-Jack suited and a player called with Ace-Ten, Hand #2 - Ace-Queen and a player called with Ace-Jack, and Hand #3 - after a player had moved all in ahead of me I looked down and had Ace-King (my opponent had Ace-9). In all three instances I had more chips than my opponent and my hand held up. In an extremely short amount of time I had eliminated four players and moved in to the chip lead. When a player is getting an absurd amount of good starting hands they call that player a card rack, and I certainly was a human card rack for a while.

Since I was now the chip leader I could afford to sit back and let some of the smaller stacks take each other out of the tournament. Eventually we got down to the four people who would get paid: Rock, Mark (still wearing my jersey), Woody, and I. I went on another brief run and was able to knock out Rock and Mark. After Mark’s elimination he took off the jersey, but now Woody wanted to wear it for our heads up match! I guess the only way I could get it back was to win it back! :) Woody and I bounced back and forth for a brief amount of time, but then I got very lucky against him in the last hand of the tournament when my A8 went up against Woody’s A9, and I caught an 8 on the flop and river to make the winning hand and capture my second CCPL win this season. In all honesty, I think that whoever drew seat 9 for the final table probably would have won this tournament with the cards that I was getting. It was a nice way for me to finish in a tournament before heading to Vegas.

We played a cash game afterwards for a while, and Mark started up his blog. I hope that I can report what the link for that will be in my next post as I look forward to reading it!!

It’s only four more days until the World Series of Poker, baby!! Shuffle up and deal!