Week 11 -- Grace of The Card Goddess
1st ($120 /13 pts): Randall "Bestowed" Ryan
2nd ($60/9 pts): Adam "False Sense of Security" Joseph
3rd ($0 /5 pts): Mick "Sharpie Tat" McNulty
4th ($0 /3pts): Eric "I'm Not Dead Yet" Hepburn
High Stakes / 6 Players / 1 Table / 12:05am Endtime
We all know there's luck in poker, and even if you play everything correctly it takes some measure of luck to win a tourney. More importantly, when you get lucky is even more critical. I had horrible luck through most of the night, but muddled through to the end, and when it counted the Card Goddess smiled.
We moved to Wednesday so as not to interfere with Election Day. Maybe it was the date change or maybe because it was Big Money night or a combination of the two, but we only had 6 players. 'Tis been a long time since that happened. So we'll be done early, right?
3 rebuys: Eric, Aaron & myself, and all the money went to Adam & Ray, who were both super stacky early and stayed that way. The rest of us poor slobs all fought the felt. First Aaron bit the dust, leaving Eric, Mick & me each well under a buy-in, while Adam & Ray were sitting with roughly $60K & $50K respectively.
Mick, soon after regaling the table with a semi-recount of being deflowered with the biggest...uh...attached organic implement....ever: "Well, we know how this will turn out. These two guys (Adam & Ray) won't go up against each other and they'll bleed out the rest of us." Ray & Adam bump fists, hug, do shots, and generally acknowledge that the evening and the cash shall be theirs. Until...
Adam has big slick, Ray has King-10. The flop comes down K-10-x. Ray, holding 2 pair, bets hard. Adam calls. The turn is an A, giving Adam the higher 2 pair. He bets hard, Ray goes all-in, Adam calls. The turn is inconsequential and Ray is left with 1.5K (all in red chips, for those playing at home). He goes all-in 2 hands later and is summarily bounced from the game, leaving Adam with Super Stack vs. 3 pygmy stacks.
Back to the luck portion of things, it seemed every time I had great cards pre-flop the worst possible boards would hit. My hunches were wrong, my reads on other players were either off or they made me think they were off. And Eric...Eric was a special case. If I had A-Q he had A-K. K-9 when he had K-10. I called his pre-flop all-in with A-K to watch his pair of Js hold. The only consolation was that as much as he wounded me he was never in a position to kill me. And somehow I kept hanging around.
Finally, I caught Eric with a bit of retribution: I had A-Q while he had A-J. Nothing significant hit the board and he finished 4th.
Mick, as she re-draws her fading Henna Halloween tattoos with a Sharpie: "Eric, you know you need to deal me good cards, because if it's just these two guys, they're going to go at it all night." Wow...thanks for the vote of confidence, especially since Adam had 2/3 of the chips at the table and I was 2:1 over Mick with whatever the balance was. And it was right then that The Card Goddess decided to smile on me. Maybe she's really Mick, because for the first time in the night, I had an actual run of decent cards. Roughly 50% of my hands from this point out were playable hands: A-x (with x being something other than sub-6), high suited connectors, mid-pairs, and a couple of high pairs (Qs, As). And just as this was happening, Adam was apparently getting lots of 8-2, 6-3, low pairs (when I'd push with what were probably better cards), and amazingly my stack got to around $50K while his dwindled to the low $60K range. Mick fought & was up & down, but never much more than a buy-in.
Finally, I got pocket 8s. Mick got pocket As, Adam 7-5. Mick slow-played her As to increase the pot. We both take the bait and go to the flop, which comes 7c-6s-5c. Mick goes all in with roughly $11K. Adam, having 2-paired the flop, goes all-in to run me out. However, I've got a pair higher than the board, an open-ended straight draw, and (just to throw in all 'outs') 3 cards to a club flush. After deliberation I call. Adam is obviously ahead at this point. The turn is an A, and now Mick has tripped her Aces and is about to triple up, while Adam is one card from putting me out. The river is...a 9. I hit the straight, take out Mick and leave Adam with $6K. Adam goes all-in blind twice. I fold on the first hand, but the 2nd one I have A-J and call. The flop comes A-A-x, the turn is a J, and I've hit a full house just to rub it in.
Maybe it's all just a cosmic reward for a Midwestern centrist veering into the Democratic camp. Go Barack. And just remember: Indiana voted for you.
2nd ($60/9 pts): Adam "False Sense of Security" Joseph
3rd ($0 /5 pts): Mick "Sharpie Tat" McNulty
4th ($0 /3pts): Eric "I'm Not Dead Yet" Hepburn
High Stakes / 6 Players / 1 Table / 12:05am Endtime
We all know there's luck in poker, and even if you play everything correctly it takes some measure of luck to win a tourney. More importantly, when you get lucky is even more critical. I had horrible luck through most of the night, but muddled through to the end, and when it counted the Card Goddess smiled.
We moved to Wednesday so as not to interfere with Election Day. Maybe it was the date change or maybe because it was Big Money night or a combination of the two, but we only had 6 players. 'Tis been a long time since that happened. So we'll be done early, right?
3 rebuys: Eric, Aaron & myself, and all the money went to Adam & Ray, who were both super stacky early and stayed that way. The rest of us poor slobs all fought the felt. First Aaron bit the dust, leaving Eric, Mick & me each well under a buy-in, while Adam & Ray were sitting with roughly $60K & $50K respectively.
Mick, soon after regaling the table with a semi-recount of being deflowered with the biggest...uh...attached organic implement....ever: "Well, we know how this will turn out. These two guys (Adam & Ray) won't go up against each other and they'll bleed out the rest of us." Ray & Adam bump fists, hug, do shots, and generally acknowledge that the evening and the cash shall be theirs. Until...
Adam has big slick, Ray has King-10. The flop comes down K-10-x. Ray, holding 2 pair, bets hard. Adam calls. The turn is an A, giving Adam the higher 2 pair. He bets hard, Ray goes all-in, Adam calls. The turn is inconsequential and Ray is left with 1.5K (all in red chips, for those playing at home). He goes all-in 2 hands later and is summarily bounced from the game, leaving Adam with Super Stack vs. 3 pygmy stacks.
Back to the luck portion of things, it seemed every time I had great cards pre-flop the worst possible boards would hit. My hunches were wrong, my reads on other players were either off or they made me think they were off. And Eric...Eric was a special case. If I had A-Q he had A-K. K-9 when he had K-10. I called his pre-flop all-in with A-K to watch his pair of Js hold. The only consolation was that as much as he wounded me he was never in a position to kill me. And somehow I kept hanging around.
Finally, I caught Eric with a bit of retribution: I had A-Q while he had A-J. Nothing significant hit the board and he finished 4th.
Mick, as she re-draws her fading Henna Halloween tattoos with a Sharpie: "Eric, you know you need to deal me good cards, because if it's just these two guys, they're going to go at it all night." Wow...thanks for the vote of confidence, especially since Adam had 2/3 of the chips at the table and I was 2:1 over Mick with whatever the balance was. And it was right then that The Card Goddess decided to smile on me. Maybe she's really Mick, because for the first time in the night, I had an actual run of decent cards. Roughly 50% of my hands from this point out were playable hands: A-x (with x being something other than sub-6), high suited connectors, mid-pairs, and a couple of high pairs (Qs, As). And just as this was happening, Adam was apparently getting lots of 8-2, 6-3, low pairs (when I'd push with what were probably better cards), and amazingly my stack got to around $50K while his dwindled to the low $60K range. Mick fought & was up & down, but never much more than a buy-in.
Finally, I got pocket 8s. Mick got pocket As, Adam 7-5. Mick slow-played her As to increase the pot. We both take the bait and go to the flop, which comes 7c-6s-5c. Mick goes all in with roughly $11K. Adam, having 2-paired the flop, goes all-in to run me out. However, I've got a pair higher than the board, an open-ended straight draw, and (just to throw in all 'outs') 3 cards to a club flush. After deliberation I call. Adam is obviously ahead at this point. The turn is an A, and now Mick has tripped her Aces and is about to triple up, while Adam is one card from putting me out. The river is...a 9. I hit the straight, take out Mick and leave Adam with $6K. Adam goes all-in blind twice. I fold on the first hand, but the 2nd one I have A-J and call. The flop comes A-A-x, the turn is a J, and I've hit a full house just to rub it in.
Maybe it's all just a cosmic reward for a Midwestern centrist veering into the Democratic camp. Go Barack. And just remember: Indiana voted for you.
0 Comment(s):
Post a Comment
Link(s) to this post:
Create a Link
<< Back to Main Listings