Crushing Some Tournaments

I played a couple of WPTs recent. The LAPC and Bay 101 Shooting star event. They were both 10k buyins, and I did pretty well in both. I feel kinda disappointed though, I could've gone a lot deeper. As usual, I had action sold out in both events.

At the LAPC, I had a good day 1, decent day 2, and crushing day 3. On day 3 I drew a tough-ish table and things broke my way, and I ended up with like 420k going into day 4. The average was only 300k, and I had an amazing table draw where I didn't really recognize anyone.

I caught an ugly break of cards where I lost several substantial pots, before I coolered a guy with a straight against top set. He slowplayed the flop and I caught my open ended straight draw on the turn.

Ironically I would get crippled against Joe Hachem in a similar spot where I raise 77 he calls with 45h, and the flop comes out 763. We end up getting it all in and I'm pretty short stacked after that. At least I lost it to Joe, we're pretty good friends and we played together on Day 1 and Day 3 together too.

I was down to about 80k at 3k/6k blinds and somehow found a fold with AQs preflop to Joe who had AK. That's a pretty big fold, and I feel really proud of it. Felt like I was freerolling. I got table changed and managed to grind my stack back up to 200k. Got lucky all in preflop once in a standard spot to get up to 140k, then got the rest with no showdowns.

Busted after jamming 88 vs AQ against Sorel Mizzi when he caught a pair on the flop. Cashed for 23k not bad.

I kinda have a funny story about Sorel actually. He played a pretty crazy hand where he got AJ all in preflop against another players T8o. He lost when the guy spiked an 8 on the river and Sorel was down to 700 chips at 1k/2k blind and somehow managed to finish 10th place. He went on an amazing upswing where he tripled up in three consecutive hands, then just beasted people nonstop for the rest of the tournament.

Since I cashed at LAPC, I decided to fly out to Bay 101 and take a shot there. It's a pretty small

casino compared to Commerce or Bike. I liked it though, staff was friendly and the games were pretty decent. They even gave away these cool decks of cards with pictures of well known poker pro's on them. I decided to start getting them signed, it seemed fun and I know someone who likes stuff like this.

In the tournament itself I did pretty poorly at first. Started with a 30k stack and down to 6k after the first couple of hours. Thankfully I got a lucky sweat by a few friends and ran my stack back up. I collected a bounty for busting Erik Seidel. At Bay 101 they give away 5k bounties for busting certain pros, so that was a nice bonus to the signed T-shirt. I got another 10k for ending up finishing day 1 as the chip leader, so I'm suddenly +5k going into the second day. Pretty nice start, and had a day off the next day, so I got dinner with a friend who lives in the San Jose area.

Day 2 was miserable though, I got JJ, QQ, and KK 4 times, and lost everytime. That'll make a chip stack shrivel up pretty fast, and I barely squeaked into the money. I'm glad I at least cashed though, so I ended up profiting 21k on that event. Not a bad trip for 4 days, got to make some new friends so that was cool.

These two events really made me feel good in my NLHE tournament game, so I think I might play some more events. I decided to take a trip to Harrah's Rincon since it's not that far, and the WSOP has a neat promotion for it's circuit events. There is a million dollar freeroll this summer during the WSOP, and they give away 100 seats to top performers at the circuit events. Given that the fields should be soft and small, I think I have a pretty good shot to win one of those 100 seats. It's worth about 10k extra, and they have some pretty decent buyin tournaments anyways, so I think it'll be worth the trip. I feel like I'm due to win something, and winning a $1500 circuit event doesn't sound half bad. I might just have to wait to the WSOP though.

Life's been interesting lately, might get even more so if I start travelling more.

I'll see you across the felt.
Bryce