WPBT 2009 - The Bacardi Diaries, Part 2

So after a few hours of drunken sleep, I managed to get myself out of bed around 9:30 AM and grabbed a quick greasy breakfast to try to soak up the remnants of the previous night's libations. A little after 11, I meandered over to the Caesar's poker room and registered early since I didn't really have anything better to do.

My expectations for the tournament were exceedingly low. I was, of course, the stone cold worst poker player in the room. Since I couldn't get anything going in the early stages, I was stuck playing the brand of short stack poker I have grown accustomed to. Thankfully, I got exceedingly lucky a few times.

I did manage to drop one hammer to take down a pot pre-flop, and used my tighty image to pick up a few others with rather marginal holdings to stay afloat. Then I inflicted the first and worst bad beat I put on anyone. It folded to me on the button so I shipped around 12BB all in with A7o. Unfortunately for him, SB was sitting on JJ, called, hit top set, and watched me go runner-runner straight to steal 3/4 of his stack.

I managed to get my stack above the average in the room when I reraised (all in) a very active CJ with 88. I knew I had absolutely no fold equity, but was willing to race for the chance at a double. What I didn't expect was for the BB to consider himself getting good odds and call also. Instant nausea. However, it managed to hold up against 98s (BB) and AQo (CJ). Unexpected triple up. At some point, I busted Otis with some junk like QJo when I decided to defend my BB and it wasn't too much more to call.

Then I got moved to Al's table. Buckle in, it's going to get bumpy.

Blinds were up to something like 2k/4k with a 500 ante so there wasn't much play available to most of us. I open shoved 3 hands in a row at one point and, luckily, was only called the third time. When I had AA. That got me up to around 70k and was second in chips at the table. To Al. Blinds and antes started to eat away at my stack as the chip leader was just bludgeoning the table and nobody seemed to find anything they wanted to go to war with. At last, he managed to fold a hand and I looked down at AKs. Good enough, ship it. This time Bam Bam, immediately on my left, called all in with KK for about 1/2 my stack. An Ace right in the door provided my second filthy beat. Sorry man. But your bounty was killer.

Somehow, I managed to survive long enough to make it to the final table but found myself with the aggressive FTrain and Al, sitting on large stacks to my right. Trying to find a spot proves quite difficult under those circumstances. There were probably 5 or 6 hands that I would have gladly opened with, but none that I really wanted to reraise with, with no hope of receiving a fold in return. At the end, I made my last stand when I was able to get it in first, but with a measly A2s. I'm a bit surprised that Astin called with just 44, considering the number of times I had folded, but he did and spiked a set so that was that. My 6th place finish was about 80 places higher than I had anticipated going in, so I call that a win. Plus I was able to yuck it up with the rest of the die hards who had gathered to rail the last table. Good stuff.

Anyway, having spent the day detoxing, and now that the tournament was behind me, I realized that some food was in order before jumping back into the rum pool. A quick bite at the IP Burger Palace did the trick and I was all set to really immerse myself in that which is WPBT, but we'll save that part of the story for Part 3...

And there go another 5 minutes of your life you're not getting back...