Vintage Post #2

Another old post from rgp...

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Newsgroup: Rec.Gambling.Poker
Date: 23 June 2002
Subject: My Battle of the Bay Championship Event Story

So I'm sitting in front of my computer with a bit of a bittersweet feeling about today's tourney. First off, let me give everyone who was involved in the tournament a thumbs up. It was run well. The competition was a lot more solid than the nooner tourneys that I've been playing lately, though there weren't any big names that I recognized with the exception of Phil Hellmuth. After basically sitting on the same 3000 in tournament chips for the first three hours of the tourney, I began to make some moves and was able to get to the final two tables. Eight and a half hours into it, I had a little under 30,000 chips... I wasn't a big stack, but with only 15 players left, I liked my chances. The blinds were 1500 and 3000 with a 500 ante. Gotta mantain... gotta concentrate. My goal was to make four moves every three orbits... and hopefully double up soon so that I could relax a bit.

In middle position I looked down to see AQ of clubs. One player made it 6000 to go... he had previously made similar bets and backed down to a bigger raise. I remembered that anytime he held a monster hand (AA, KK, or QQ), he moved all-in. I thought for a moment about what he might have and made up my mind that he had a medium pair, and he would be in a real tough spot to call an all-in raise. I went over the top, confident that I wouldn't be getting a call. Everyone folded to him. After what seemed like an eternity of staring me down trying to get some sort of read, counting his chips, and staring me down some more... he finally put in 23,000 to cover my raise. He turned over AK and that was that.

I honestly couldn't tell you what came on the flop. When I saw AK, my eyes blurred and I felt like I'd been kicked hard. I can't remember being so wrong in a read... after taking so long to call, I was sure that he didn't have me dominated. It was pretty surreal. The whole thing reminded me of that Scotty Nguyen quote in one of the Discovery Channel specials... "You gotta make the right move... you don't make the right move, I see you next year!"

So after 8 1/2 hours of hard playing, concentrating on every little move that each player made... how they stacked their chips, how their neck muscles moved, where they looked, whether they fidgeted or not with a big hand, etc... I walked away with a profit of $250 and a nice fuzzy feeling knowing that I ALMOST made it to the $31k first prize. I'm pretty tired for what is supposed to be an easy way to make a living... but it's nothing a few beers wont' fix.

However, it is good to place in the money out of 180 entrants, especially while seeing many players that I respect on the rail. And it was nice getting further than Phil. ;) So I guess this go around I'm 15th in the bay, rather than first... I'll have to wait until the San Pablo tourneys to claim what is mine. ;)

Dutch

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So that was my first major tournament... I actually ended up doing ok in San Pablo, and after that took the bankroll to the Grand Slam of Poker in LA's Hustler Club... and blew most of it. I found all my old trip reports and will post them as more vintage posts in the next few days and weeks. Pretty crazy looking back and seeing how hungry I was.