Now on to the juicy stuff.....
So a brief update on life in my poker world. I have done it again, not sure how this time, but it happened. I qualified for another $10,000 buy-in poker tournament. This time, its in my own backyard, Foxwoods Resort and Casino, down in Ledyard, CT. I think that they have the best satellite tournament structure out there. They have 3 levels that you can buy in directly.
Act I - $60: Single table tournament, 10 players. Top 3 finishers advance to an Act II
Act II - $150: Single table tournament, 10 players. Top finisher advances to an Act III, next two get a coupon for another Act II
Act III - $1,050: Multi-table tournament. Top 10% of the field wins a seat into the main event. If there is money left over in the prize pool, they give as many tickets back into another Act III as they can, and the rest is a cash prize.
Basically, I went down in August with my buddy Jeremey, and won an Act I. Didn't play the Act II that day. Went down in September with my boss, didnt play in an Act II because they were nowhere near sold out when we got there. So I played in two sit-n-go's, took 2 seconds, and won $200. Decided to go down a couple of weeks later, again with my boss, and got to play in my Act II finally. Took second, registered immediately for another. I ended up winning the whole thing. Got my ticket for an Act III!
Woke up on Saturday morning, had to decide when I was getting back down to play my Act III. With everything that is going on at my job, I didn't have too many opportunities to play as they only held the III's on Friday and Sunday evenings, at 6:00pm. I decided that I would just go down on Sunday and play. Let the chips fall as they may. I get down there, all ready to play.
After annoying my good friend Michael down in TN, for some last minute tournament advice, we started. First few levels I couldn't get anything going, as the guy to my right was a card rack, or at least thats how he was representing himself. His luck soon changed, and so did mine. I showed down a couple of hands, not terrible plays, mind you, and built up a nice little stack of chips. Then I started to catch some cards! I was raising to about 6x the BB each time, and it would get folded down to me, and I was showing AA, AQ, QQ, 10 10, AK, AJ. I was building a nice solid table image.
At each break, I would make a quick round of phone calls, to friends giving updates, and my last was always to the "Snake Boy" in TN to let him know what I had and what was going on in the tournament.
It got to the point where I had over 50,000 in chips and was able to play some "big stack" poker. I was able to play tight and maintain my stack between 40k/50k until we got down to two tables. We sailed through the first two "bubbles" (the person who gets nothing, and the person who gets the cash prize) very quickly. I look down and I get AK so I make a nice raise....folds around to one guy who goes all in. I have him covered by about 20k so I call, he flips up A 5 off suit. Everything goes great, until the river, where he spikes a 5. Bye bye chips. Very next hand, I get AK again, this time suited. I push for my remaining 22k, and wouldnt you know it, same guy calls me. Flip up the hands, he has 10 10. My heart sinks. Not looking forward to playing in another Act III when the seat was this close (we were 4 away from the final table, where all 10 got Main Event seats). Then, the river of justice hits! I spike an Ace on the river to win the hand and get back up to 44k. From then on, it was basically nursing my stack trying to make it to the end, which obviously I did get lucky enough to. Now, its just the waiting game, trying to make it through the next two weeks of work, and a very important project coming to an end, and then its a week off for nothing but playing poker!!!
Thank you to all my friends that supported and listened to me on this journey. And hopefully I will be making lots of calls from the Main Event!!!
posted by Spike @ Monday, October 30, 2006
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