WSOP Qualifiers

Well, as I said in my last post I planned to play on-line all day and was going to play a few WSOP Main Event Qualifiers. I had already won my seat into the PokerStars 200 Seat Guarantee as well as the Team Moneymaker event that guaranteed 15 spots to the main event which was also to be played on PokerStars. I started the day spending close to $600 trying to qualify for FullTilt's main event qualifier and then never even played the $500 tournament. It was an extremely frustrating morning and I was starting to tilt it up a bit and really hate hold'em.

I got off to a nice start in the Moneymaker qualifier. A guy just totally handed me 3000 chips early and I slowly chipped up for a few hours. In the mean time I busted out of the 200 seat guarantee tournament pretty early. I made a few bad plays, an untimely bluff but still had a workable stack when I jam JJ over the top of an early raise. The dude snap calls me with A8o, what the fuck are you thinking man? Well, I guess he knew the board was going to be 679K5 for a nice rivered straight. Where the hell do they find these people?

I started hitting some hands in the Moneymaker tournament and got moved to a table that had a ton of big stacks. After a few rotations it was pretty obvious that the one player was quite horrible and had a bunch of chips. He proceeded to dump 55k of a 70k stack to other players at the table. Then he went on a tear and made all the way back to 60k. I had worked my stack to a little excess of that when he makes an early position raise and I look down at AK. Most players I would reraise here but I wanted to control the pot and make if I hit and get out if I missed. The flop comes KT6 with two clubs. He leads out a solid bet and I raise him. He just calls. The turn is a complete blank, something like the 2h. He checks and I just fire all-in, I really think he has KQ here and sure enough he snap calls with KQ and my hand holds. I am now up well over 100k chips, sitting in 4th place in the tournament with about 90 players left and they will be awarding 19 seats.

I am pretty excited but there is certainly a long way to go. Over the next two hours I get my stack up to about 200k and bounce around anywhere from 2nd overall to 17th overall during that time. As we near the final 19 players things get pretty intense. Nobody wants to bust now after playing for 8 hours and nearing a package that has value in excess of $13,500. I get a couple raising hands in AQ and TT that I have to release and seriously hurt my stack.

Within a hand or two I pick up AK. Now, I don't need to get involved with hands but the super short stack remaining is at my table and I will certainly play the hand if they decide to go all-in. So, I figure my best strategy here is to limp with AK and if the shortstack, who is in the sb, decides to jam then I can call. If some bigger stack raises and the shortstack folds I can fold not having wasted much of my stack. Ok, I limp, bigger stack limps behind, and sure enough shortstack jams all-in, the bb calls, I call, and the other big stack limper calls along. The three of us all check it down as we should do basically playing the hand 3vs1. We don't care who wins the pot as long as one of us takes the all-in out we all win a seat. Well, it backfired, the shortstack had AQ and the board came Q high and she 4xed up and was now super healthy. I am starting to absolutely lose my mind. I am now right in the mix with the short stacks again, I just got three outted from what would have been a guaranteed package.

I am now sitting in 19th of 19 remaining players. I feel physically sick and think I am going to have played for 8 hours and get nothing. The blinds are now getting big and I am getting absolutely nothing I can push and blind all the way down to under 40,000 chips when the blinds are at 6k/12k. The field is basically waiting for me to bust. I find Ac3c and jam it all in and get two callers. I flop an ace but I dont know if that is good or not. The board goes running clubs and I make the nut flush, I do a nice little Tiger Woods fistpump as I am now sitting in about 14th place and should be able to cash. FYI my flopped ace was in fact leading on every street of the hand but that little club on the end to make certain sure was nice.

Shortly after that the shortest remaining stack goes all-in on another table and busts out and I win my seat. Needless to say I was incredibly excited. My head was kind of buzzing. Details on my package (WSOP package you dirty minded bastards) can be seen here http://www.pokerstars.com/poker/promotions/team-moneymaker/

While all of this was going on I was playing the weekly $200 O8 tournament on Stars. I had got cracked and my stack was all the way down to 658 chips when the blinds were 500/1k. Basically dead, right? Well, I go on a heater, build a nice stack and eventually end up finishing in 5th place. I am quite disappointed in my play at the final table and felt I should have taken minimum of 3rd. The cash was worth $1620 which I split with my buddy John as he played the tournament as well. First place was worth 6k though and really should have been in my grasp. I just became too much of a calling station and pissed away a great stack and what had been a well played tournament.

Not going to complain too much though. All in all it would certainly rank as one of my best ever days of poker and certainly one of my greatest on-line days. I may actually take a day off poker tomorrow and just wander around. Maybe go to the outlet mall and buy some clothes so I don't have to do laundry ;-). I should get more details on my WSOP package in the next day or two. If possible I wouldn't mind taking the $10,000 and not playing but I think for this event I may be forced to play. Which, who knows, could turn into the best thing ever if I actually cashed. I'll figure those things out in the next couple days and may have to make arrangements to stay in Vegas longer.