Two Pocket Kings Hands and Modern Poker Thinking

I've played 3 cash game sessions since my last post and ran into two interesting spots with pocket kings.

The first hand was at Bay 101 at $2/$3/$5 (at most places in the bay area there is a $2 blind on the button at this level in addition to the $3 small blind and $5 big blind) with a $500 max buy in. I was off to a good start sitting on an $1,100 stack in a great game on Friday afternoon.

In the hand in question, three people called for $5, I looked down at KK and made it $30 to go in the hijack. The cutoff and button both called, the blinds and the first two callers folded and then to my surprise the 3rd caller made it $230 to go out of his $640 stack leaving him with $410 left.

Some of you might remember that I had a spot in the recent $630 tournament at Lucky Chances where I got dealt KK, someone limp re-raised me, I was pretty sure he had AA and that is what he had.

This spot may seem similar, but it is totally different. The biggest difference is that this guy was the third one in the pot. If people are going to limp re-raise they're typically the first one in. If other players have shown some interest in the pot the player with AA will almost always just come in for a raise. Secondly, in the tournament I made it 500 to go and the player with AA made it 1,200. That is begging for a call. Going from $30 to $230 is clearly trying to blow everyone else out of the pot to pick up the $115 that's already out there.

This looked like a clear case of someone calling with a hand like 88 or 99 and then getting aggressive with it in the heat of battle rather than a well thought out plan. After a short pause, I moved all in and despite the fact that I was almost positive his hand was kind of marginal, I fully expected him to call. People don't three bet 1/3 of their stack and then fold preflop no matter how bad it looks for them.

As expected he called and then he asked me if I wanted to run it twice. This is a common thing at the higher stakes (much less common at the $5 big blind level) where if both parties agree they will run out a river, or a turn and river, or in this case the whole board multiple times and half the pot will be awarded to the winner of each run out. At Bay 101 the rule is that the pot has to be more than $1,000 and all of the action has to be complete (i.e. an all in and a call) before players can discuss running it twice. The point of it is to reduce some of your variance and also it's fun!

My policy has generally been to say yes anytime someone wants to run it twice. The downside here if my opponent did have something like 99 would be that he'd have 10 shots to hit a 9 instead of 5, but the upside would be that the chances of him hitting a 9 (or otherwise making some miracle straight or flush) BOTH times would be extremely remote.

So we agreed to run it twice and my opponent turned over AK! This was a much stronger hand than I expected, but I was still a 70/30 favorite.

The first flop came out J 7 3 which was a perfectly fine flop, but an A came on the turn followed by a 2 on the river. At this point I was pissed about the first run out, but thrilled that we'd agreed to run it twice as if we'd only run it once the whole $1,300+ pot would be headed to my opponent. Now with one A gone I was a huge favorite on the second run out.

The second flop came out 9 5 2 which was also a perfectly fine flop. The turn was a 3 and I thought "Oh shit, he picked up a wheel draw. This is never easy." At that same moment my opponent stood up and said "Put a four out there! Four! Four!" The river was a 4 and I lost both run outs. This was extremely annoying.

Not annoying was the fact that I won the next pot along with plenty of others and left a $1,200 winner on the night.

In the other hand in question I was at the Matrix but still playing $2/$3/$5. An early position player with about $500 in his stack made it $20 to go and got one call. I was in the big blind with KK (one heart and one spade). I made it $90 to go and only the raiser called. The flop came down A T 5 with the AT of diamonds and the 4 of hearts.

This is not a good flop for my hand and I am out of position so I'm in a tough spot.  But this is a good example of how high level modern poker players look at things compared to how every TV show and movie would have you believe it works or even how players of the 80's and 90's might look at it.

In the movies I'd just look at him and his lip would curl or he'd be holding his breath or he'd blink too slow and I would know what he had. Of course he'd either have AA or something like 85 off suit and never ever have anything in between. Also I'd never be the one betting and deciding how much to bet, he'd just be all in and I'd use my super limp curl reading to nail his ass!

I was born in 1980 so I can't say for sure that this is how players in the 80's and 90's thought, but it seemed like they'd look at the preflop raise, and the call, put the villain on a specific hand that was most likely given the information they had and then play the hand as if their opponent had that hand. Of course they'd revise as things went along, but they'd pick one hand and target that. You'll still hear plenty of amateur players these days justifying their play by saying things like "I put him on AK" or some other exact hand.

The modern way to look at it is put your opponent on a weighted range of hands and take a course of action that is best against that range. In this case, I think this opponent after raising to $20 and just calling the $90 probably has 99, TT, JJ, QQ, AK, AQ suited, KQ suited, QJ suited, or JT suited. That's 9 different hands, but I can't just say there is a 1 in 9 chance that he has any one of them because some occur more frequently than others due to the nature of card combinations and the fact that some cards are on the board or in my hand and thus can't be in his hand. There are 6 ways to make a pair, (Club/Diamond, Club/Heart, Club/Spade, Heart/Diamond, Heart/Spade, and Diamond Spade), 4 ways to make a suited hand  (one for each suit), and 16 ways to make an off suit hand. We refer to these as combinations or combos.

I can split this into hands I'm worried about and hands I'm not.

Worried about:
AK - 6 combos (We start with 16, but with an ace on the board and two K's in my hand only 6 remain)
AQs - 4 combos
TT - 3 combos
KQ or QJ of diamonds - 2 combos

Not Worried about:
QQ - 6 combos
JJ - 6 combos
99- 6 combos
JTs - 3 combos
KQs or QJs NOT diamonds - 6 combos

That leaves me with about 15 combos I'm worried about and 27 I'm not. So what do I do? Well, the worrying combos are never folding no matter how much I bet and the not worrying ones are probably all folding to any bet. So the answer is to bet relatively small so you lose the least against the bad hands and you don't just give up and let your opponent bet and win with whatever they have.

How do I know that he only has the above combos and not something else? Experience! I'm not looking at his limp curling or his goosebumps, but I know what types of hands people show up with in this spot in general and have observed that there is no reason to believe that this specific opponent would deviate from what is standard for players at this level. There are players where their range here could be any pair, AT+, any suited ace, or suited connectors, but not this dude.

Could he have something else? Sure! There is always a random spaz factor but other than AA or maybe AJ suited I've accounted for everything that's not folding and I can heavily discount those hands. Everything he might have is folding to a bet.

Did I think all this through at the table? Hell no! One of the reasons for writing this post is to rethink it though in great detail, but in the moment I thought "He probably has as many combos of pairs as Ax so I have to bet and I should use small sizing because all the pairs are folding no matter what I make it."  Did I figure this stuff out on my own? Hell no! I've piggy backed on the analysis of people way smarter than me.

Back to the hand! $200 in the pot, board of AT5, I settled on betting $80 on the flop and he called. At this point I was ready to give him credit for an ace and just give up. But then a miracle happened! The turn was a the K of clubs! I figured if I checked here it would look like I had QQ or JJ and was giving up so I checked.

In the span of less than 2 seconds I checked, my opponent moved all in for $330, I called and he rolled over QJ of hearts! ACK! He turned a straight! The table said "OHHHHHHH!" Then I turned over my hand and they said "OHHHHHHH!" Then the river paired the 5 making me a full house! "OHHHHHHHHHH!" NOICE!

I really like doing this kind of analysis of the combinations after the fact because it helps me in the moment to have an intuitive sense of how things balance out. Also on occasion if I'm facing a huge decision I can crank through an approximation of this in a minute or two at the table, but my lip curls while I do it.

Project Phaser - Phase 1.4 (Lucky Chances $230 Turbo)

Another day, more Battle of the Bay! This time it was $230 buy in with 20 minute levels and we started with 200 entries and a 1st place prize of $12,600. My last tournament was the day before and it was a real grind as I played for 7 hours bookended by over an hour each way in rush hour traffic As a result I almost bailed on this one, but decided to stick it out. In the end I figured with the faster structure I'd probably go broke in time to beat rush hour or make the money.

4 levels in I was down to 17K from a 20K starting stack, but shortly after coming back from the first break I doubled up in a pretty standard way. I raised to 1,200 with QQ, got one caller, the big blind made it 4,500, I shoved for 17,000 and he called me with AK suited. The board ran out jack high and I was up to 35K!

Still in level 5 I had a flop that was pretty good for my hand but I misplayed it. I was on the button with 65 of clubs and the cutoff who was a very active big stack made it 900 to go with blinds of 200/400. I made the call and both blinds called as well. The flop came out 6 5 5! By pretty good I mean I hit the bat shit out of that flop!

The big blind fired out 1,600 and the raiser called. It's not often that you flop and full house and have multiway action and people betting into you and I wasn't really sure what to do. There were two diamonds on the board so this was a really draw heavy flop. I decided to just call and hope my opponents made something on the turn. When the 9 of diamonds rolled off I was hoping someone made a flush, but they both checked to me.

My big mistake was not betting here. If either villain had a 5 or a big diamond I get action for sure, but I checked kind of hoping one of them would have a diamond and hit it. The river was a total disaster - a black ace. If one of them did have a 5, A5 was the most likely and now I couldn't beat it. More importantly if someone had been hanging on with a pocket pair it was now only a bluff catcher. They checked to me, I bet 5K and they both quickly folded.

Over the next few levels I had a couple of big pair hands. On the first I raised KK to 2,500 and got one call. The flop came out 986 with two spades and I made a big bet of 7K into a 7,500 chip pot. My opponent moved all in for what I thought was about 17K or 18K and I called without hesitation. He rolled over JT with no spades, the board ran out 8 2 and I took it down. When I counted it down I discovered he actually made a 26K shove and maybe I should have thought a little longer before calling!

Doing a shitty job of visually inspecting a stack of chip and quickly tallying it is exactly the kind of problem that Phase 1 was geared toward helping me identify.

On the second big pair hand put a guy all in for 18K over his late position raise to 3,700. Unfortunately he had QQ and I didn't get any help.

The way this all shook out was I had 50K chips which was dead on average with 80 players left going in to the 1K/2K with 2K big blind ante blinds level.

In my first hand at a new table I got dealt KK again. This time I made it 16K to go over a 6K raise and my opponent went all in for 24K. Of course I called and I was bummed to see he had AA. But I finally got lucky and flopped a king! More bat shit flops!

My good luck continued in the next level. A player to my right limped in for 2,400 and I decided to just call with 99. Both blinds came along to the flop which came out a beautiful J 9 8 with two clubs. Not only did I have a set, but this board connects with a wide variety of hands so I'd almost certainly get some action. When the action got to the limper he casually chucked four 5K chips into the pot! A couple of hands earlier I'd raised this guy lite and he'd blown me off the hand with an all in so I was hoping he'd read me as a frequent bluffer. With that in mind I moved all in for 51K. He tanked for a long time before finally calling me with KJ no clubs.

I knew that more than half of the deck would have him drawing dead on the turn and his only way to win was a runner runner full house or straight. I was hoping for a deuce, but instead got the worst turn possible - a jack! At that point the guy to my left seeing that I'd made a full house, but clearly not thinking it through said "It's over!"I thought something to the effect of "Oh sweet lord! This son of a bitch has put the hex on me! Why would he say that I'm doomed!" As I've mentioned before I am not superstitious but to clarify I mean that in the sense that my actions don't change based on any superstitions and I believe 100% in randomness, but these thoughts do occur to me. Happily I was not forced to murder Mr. It's Over and I got the pot when the river was a meaningless 3.

I was up to 125K which was double average with 62 players left.

Generally the structure was really good in these tournaments with the exception of going from 1200/2400 to 2K/4K. That is a big jump and a full third of the field went broke in the 20 minutes of that level.

As we approached the money bubble I moved all in for 135K with AK over a raise to 22K and my opponent folded TT face up! Then while I was in the big blind at 5K/10K the small blind just called. He was an older guy with a 100K stack and as the cards were coming out I told myself that I was going to ship it dark if he just called.

Sometimes a tricky player might just call in the small blind as a trap, but I didn't think this guy was capable of that and I knew if he had a hand he'd be willing to go with this close to the money he'd raise it. When he called I was going to make a show of looking at my cards, but then I actually looked at one and it was a 7. Not wanting to look at the other one and find a 2 which might make me chicken out, I moved all in and after a slight hesitation, during which I discovered a nice wave of self doubt, he folded.

Now I was really rolling! I had 190K and was feeling great!

Then I had kind of medium sized hand go south and it was the beginning of the end. The most aggressive player at the table who had me covered made it 22K to go under the gun. I looked down at AJ and made the call. The flop came down K 8 8 and I was ready to surrender, but after I checked he quickly checked it back. In retrospect this was highly suspect as an aggressive player would bet a K high dry board close to 100% of the time vs the big blind. I should have continued my surrender, but I took a shot at it betting 35K into the 62K chip pot and my opponent snap moved all in. Drat! Hopefully this hand will stick with me (along with the 65 full house hand) and I'll avoid this easily avoidable mistake in the future.

I did managed to sneak into the money, but not before a fair stretch of getting no cards at an active table and paying a few costly rounds of blinds and antes.

In my last hand the blinds were up to 8K/16K and I got dealt KJ off under the gun with 85K in my stack. At this point the blinds and antes amounted to 40K per round so if I folded I'd be putting in half my stack over the next few hands and I thought I had enough to still have some fold equity. I moved all in and the player to my left immediately moved all in over the top. As per usual he had AK! You would think by reading this blog that people get dealt AK every other hand, but on a given hand each player has a 1 in 135 chance of getting AK. No miracles materialized and I was out in 16th.

16th place paid $360 so I made $130 on the day. It felt good to make the money, but it is annoying to be so close to winning thousands and to walk out with a min cash.

In the 4 Battle of the Bay tournaments I managed to get my starting 20K stack to 40K+, 100K+, 100K+ and 190K. That is a shitload of equity that I generated and it's a little frustrating to not really realize it to any significant degree, but it's a certainty that if I continue to put myself in a good position in the early and middle stages that I'll bring in a big result eventually. I'm really happy with how I'm playing lately.

My $10,000 bankroll is now at $10,670.

Next on my official schedule is Phase 3 which will be playing 5 tournaments on 5 consecutive days with buy ins of $350 to $550 at Bay 101 starting on May 14th. Although between now and then I will likely post about Phase 2 (playing some online tournaments), Phase 4 (my health and fitness goals for May) and Phase 5 (Playing a stupid long cash game session or two).

Project Phaser - Phase 1.3 (Another Lucky Chances $380)

We started on Wednesday with 261 entrants, $380 buy in, 30 minute levels, 24 spots in the money and a first place prize of $29,220.

If you read my last post you may remember that I went broke with A2 when I ran it into AK in a spot that was debatable (not bad per se, but literally debatable). The universe seemed intent on rubbing this in my face as I got dealt A2 off 5 times in the first 90 minutes.

We started with 20K chips again and after a fair start I had 24K coming back from the first break when I got into my first big hand of the day. With blinds of 200/400 and a single big blind ante of 400 chips I got dealt 33 and raised it to 1,200. This is a little on the aggressive side, but plan A is to have everyone fold and take down the blinds, plan B is to fire the flop and try to steal it and plan C is make the best hand. Anyway, I got one field caller and the flop came down 9 4 3!

When I hear big shot poker players talk about hands like this they almost always say "It was a pretty good flop for my hand" or some other such understatement. I on the other hand would characterize this as nailing the bat shit out of this flop!

With bottom set I bet out 2,000 into the 3,400 chip pot and my opponent raised me to 4,000! Ah ha! This guy did not seem like an especially creative type and I read this raise as either A9, T9, 98 or a pocket pair 55-88, TT or JJ. I decided to be cagey and just called. The turn was a 9 which meant that he picked up some outs if he had a 9 or a pocket pair, but I was sure to get it all in if he happened to have a 9. I checked the turn and he bet out 6,000. I looked down at my stack and saw I had about 19K left. Against an aggressive player, just calling and hoping he'd fire the river would be an OK plan, but this guy seemed like a showdown monkey and I thought he'd check back the river if he didn't have a 9. So I shipped it all in and he quickly folded.

A few hands later I got dealt KK, some dude with AK moved all in for 7K and I took him out! Get out of here dude!

At this point I had 43K chips with 145 players left 3.5 hours after the tournament started.

I managed to work in a bluff at the 500/1000 level. I opened to 2,600 with 97 of spades and only the big blind called. The flop came down K84 with two diamonds and one spade. This was not a pretty good flop for me, but I bet out 3,500 trying to steal it. The big blind called and I figured he probably had a K or a flush draw. He had 13K left and my plan was to give up unless I picked up a straight flush draw with the J,T,6 or 5 of spades on the turn in which case I'd move all in. I explicitly thought exactly that in the moment. But then the turn rolled off the A of hearts and I thought "Oh yeah, if and ace comes I'd be a fool not to keep firing." I grabbed a stack of 5 5,000 chips (which was overkill) and plopped them in the middle. My opponent grumbled about how he should have raised the flop while throwing his cards in the muck. The next day I saw him and he asked me about the hand and I admitted I was bluffing.

A little later with blinds of 800/1600 I opened to 4,500 in the cutoff with 99 and the button moved all in for 27,000! Against an aggressive opponent this would be a pretty quick call, but my opponent was a younger woman who seemed straightforward and a little timid. If she had an over pair I'd be a 4 to 1 underdog, but after counting down my own stack and seeing that I'd have 45K left even if I called and lost I decided to was worth the risk. To my delight the board ran out 8765T and I beat AJ.

5 hours in to the tournament I had 110K chips with 82 players left and the average stack was 63K. This was an excellent situation!

Then I ended up with a totally awful table dynamic. I got squeezed between two good players who were making a lot of moves and both had a lot of chips. The way to beat this type of player is usually to make a good hand, play it passively and call them down, but I was getting total shit.

Also around this time "Bay Area Legend" Pay Lyons got moved to my table. Pat is most notable for winning the Arizona State Poker Champion ship for about $260,000 this past April and then two weeks later for winning a $4,000 buy in world poker tour event for $650,000. He was also wearing a World Series of Poker Circuit Event winner's ring. All of this is obviously very legit. But I'm going to throw some shade at him anyway!

My memories of him are as being part of this small group of dudes, who seemed like a bunch of goofs to me, that seemed to be friends, were loud and kind of smug and were at every Lucky Chances tournament. I thought of them as "Those Lucky Chances Guys" in my head because they were there EVERY SINGLE TIME I went to Lucky Chances. I always wondered what they did for a living because they seemed like break even players at best to me.

Pat seemed kind of like the ring leader and one thing I can say for sure is that dude was poker obsessed. After he went broke he'd hang around to see what happened in the tournament! No one does this. To his credit he always seemed to be enjoying himself no matter what. On the flip side I once saw someone offer him $20 in all seriousness to "Shut the fuck up" when he was hanging around the final table of a totally meaningless $150 daily tournament at the Oaks (at midnight on a weekday!) after going broke.

My memories and impressions are all 10+ years old at this point, but when I saw that he won the Arizona tournament I thought "Holy shit! THAT guy just won $260K!" and I couldn't believe he followed it up with an even better win.

One of my favorite songs lately is "The Man" by The Killers that has an fantastic video. Watch it here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3xcybdis1k

When the video starts it looks like the main guy is an awesome guy. He's hanging out in Vegas looking tough, with beautiful women singing about how he is the man! Sweet! But as it goes on you realize that he was also looking tough outside a mobile home, cooking a steak on a grill with just a fork, checking his hair in a busted mirror, shooting a can from 10 feet away while feeling pleased (i.e. proud of such and easy shot) and watching VHS tapes in a shitty hotel room. You start to think, maybe this guy ISN'T The Man? Then you see him performing and people yawning. People wouldn't yawn the actual man would they?! Then the beautiful women leave. Finally he's playing roulette and losing horribly to the point where he bets his car. This guy is NOT THE MAN AT ALL! I think this is all brilliant.

I always assumed Pat was kind of like that guy in the video where he was walking around thinking "I'm the man! I'm the man! I got news for you baby you're looking at the man!" but in reality not so much The Man as not the man at all. With this in mind you can imagine how my eyes bugged out when I saw his results.

Anyway, congrats to Pat on his success (I might be shouting boo here, but as they say, they don't boo nobody's) and on to my failure!

I got totally stalled for close to 2 hours as the blinds went from 800/1600 to 1K/2K to 1200/2400 to 2K/4K  and finally to 3K/6K.

At this point I still had 90K left despite no real hands of note, but with blinds of 3K/6K and a 6K ante it was costing me 15K every orbit and if I didn't do something soon I'd be toast.

On my first big blind of that level I threw 6K into the middle for the ante, posted 6K for the big blind and had 78K left behind. To my surprise the under the gun player called, the cutoff called and the button called. All these calls were highly unusual this late in a tournament.

I looked around and oddly all of the callers seemed to have about 50K in their stacks. With all of those calls there was now 33K in the pot and I decided if I looked down at anything remotely strong I had to try to steal it. I had enough in my stack that if I got called and lost I'd still have some chips left and if they were't raising they really shouldn't want to call off their whole stack. When I pealed back my cards I had A5 of diamonds which was plenty good to shove, but the stupid small blind beat me to it moving all in for about 50K! I actually considered calling here. I'd have to put in 46K to win 80K which is a good price and this guy could be on a total steal, but I decided that was too loose. I folded, one of the players in the field who had inexplicably limped with AJ made the call, the raiser showed KQ and the board ran out K high...with three diamonds! Ack!

On the next hand I was in the small blind with 75K left. The button inexplicably just called the 6K. Every now and then someone will limp on the button with a big hand to try to induce a raise, but my read on this guy was he just didn't know what the hell he was doing and probably had JT suited or something similar. I looked down at A2 and moved all in expecting to pick up with 21K in the pot without a fight. To my shock and horror the big blind instantly went all in behind me.

At this point I took a closer look at the situation and had a horrible sinking feeling. I had A of diamonds and 2 of clubs which was exactly the hand I'd gone broke with in my last event. There were 44 players left. I got 44th place last time. I lost to AK last time. This time the damn button folded KJ face up and it turned out the big blind had, you guessed it, AK! The board ran out garbage and I was out in 44th again with A2. It shouldn't matter, but the exact repetition of the situation added an extra sting to the loss.

My $10,000 bankroll is at $10,540. Next up is $230 Turbo No Limit at Lucky Chances.

Project Phaser - Phase 1.2 (Lucky Chances $380)

While Sunday's tournament had Lucky Chances bursting at the seams, Monday's $380 buy in tournament had it looking like an average Friday afternoon, but on a Monday morning. We started with the same 20,000 chip starting stack, 30 minute levels, 100/100 blinds to start and eventually 227 entries.

Here is the big board with the prizes and such.

I had a couple of real hot shot big talkers at my first table. The Young Hot Shot talked about how he was happy he busted out early the day before because he went home and played a big tournament online, finished second and won however many thousands of dollars while the Old Hot Shot evidently made the final table in the $630 the day before. It didn't stop there as both continued popping off at the mouth about some other final tables they'd made and how soft some of these games are. These guys weren't friends or anything like that, the just shared the common ground of being big mouth hot shots. If you just listened to poker players talk you'd think that everyone was a winning player.

Poker is a game of information and before I'd seen these guys play a hand they'd given me huge head start on categorizing them and anticipating the types of plays they'd be capable of. I kept my mouth shut about my accomplishments and silently rooted against both of them.

To my delight both of them made asinine plays and went broke in the first hour that show a good counterpoint to how I play.

The Young Hot Shot limped in in early position for 100 with 64 suited, got raised by a guy who was very straightforward to 500, two other players called and they took the flop 4 ways. The flop came down 8 4 3 rainbow and Young Hot Shot bet out 2,000 (almost a full pot sized bet) with second pair into 3 opponents. The preflop raiser raised to 6,000 and another guy cold called. If you know how to hand read at all, major alarm bells will go off with that cold call. There are no draws on this board and the raiser has basically announced that he has a big pocket pair so what is that cold caller calling with? It has to be a huge hand. The turn came out a 6 and Young Hot Shot instantly shoved his two pair for about 14,000. The raiser foolishly called with QQ and so did the cold caller who had 33. The river was a K and Young Hot Shot headed back to the online tables.

I'm sure when he told the story to whoever or played it back to himself he said "I made two pair and ran into a set" instead of "I tried to do WAY too much in the first level calling out of positing with garbage preflop, then I made a hopeless bluff and ran into two big hands. But I didn't let that stop me from foolishly taking one off anyway drawing almost dead. When I got a miracle turn I made a bet that was almost sure to fold out any hands that I beat and get called by every hand that beat me. But seriously bro these games are so soft."

 In Old Hot Shot's hand the dude who had the 33 in the last hand 3 bet from 800 to 2,400 and he called along with 3 others. The flop came down A J J rainbow, everyone else checked and Old Hot Shot bet 2500 into the 12,500 chips pot. Only the raiser called. The turn was a 5 and it went check, check. The river was a J and now the raiser bet 15,000 into the 17,500 pot and Old Hot Shot snap called him with his last 14,000 or so. The raiser showed an A and Old Hot Shot mucked saying "I made a full house, what could I do there." Well, you could not bet an underpair into 4 people and not call off your entire stack with a bluff catcher in a spot where someone is never bluffing?

Anyway I enjoyed seeing their smug asses hit the rail.

I got off to a pretty good start. In levels 2, 3 and 4 over I had one good hand in each level. I flopped top two with AK and again with KQ getting a little action with each and missed a flush draw with JT suited, but hit the J and was good. These weren't big pots but got me up to about 35K going into the first break. No where in there was limping with a garbage hand or trying some random bluff in a multiway pot!

I stayed between 30K and 40K for the next few hours as the field slowly caught and then passed me. I found just enough good spots to tread water, but I didn't put myself needlessly in danger with the marginal cards I was getting.

About 4 hours in I finally got a big pocket pair. With blinds of 500/1000 and one 1000 ante, the under the gun player who was a guy in his 70's with an 80K stack made it 3,500 to go. I was next to act, looked down at QQ and made it 9,000 to go leaving me with about 30K left in my stack. The dude to my left who looked like he was barely 21 and had about 22K in his stack went into a 45 second round of theatrics saying stuff like "This is so sick" and "I really just have one move here" and "I'm stuck." I was pretty sure this wasn't an act, but not 100% sure. It felt kind of like AK or JJ to me. Eventually he just called, which was a really odd move, but as soon as he did the other guy quickly moved all in!

I have with 99.9% certainty never intentionally folded KK (or AA) preflop and I almost never fold QQ preflop. I only specifically remember doing it a few times and I'm sure it's been less than 1% of the time over my career and is probably more like 1 time in 250. But this was a pretty clear fold. Ask anyone who has played poker at all what the old guy is raising under the gun and then 4 bet shoving over two people and they'll tell you it's AA or maybe KK and that's it.

So after 30 seconds to make sure I was really sure I folded, the young guy called, the old guy rolled over KK and the young guy had QQ also! I kept quiet and didn't tell him he was drawing totally dead! Meanwhile I patted myself on the back for getting away from a hand where most players would go broke and felt like I was playing with house money from that point on.

A couple of hands later I got a nice break. With blinds of 500/1000/1000 everyone folded to me in the small blind. The big blind only had about 9,000 and I put him all in with T7. This is questionable, but he's probably folding preflop 2/3 to 3/4 of the time and the rest of the time I'll usually be like a 65/35 or 60/40 underdog. Anyway, he snap called me with A4, but the flop came out J98! Zing!

At this point there were 82 players left with 21 spots paying and I had 38K which was about 2/3 of average.

I had some snacks with me but I was starting to get hungry for some real food. Lucky Chances has a full menu that you can order at the table, but I hate ordering food in tournaments. I'm not superstitious, but you can go broke at any time in a tournament and the idea of sitting there after busting waiting for  food and then hastily gobbling it down sitting at an empty table sounds like the 7th circle of hell to me. Despite that I had to eat something so I ordered some Mongolian Beef and sure enough I put the hex on myself!

With blinds of 800/1600 and a 1600 ante, the under the gun player just called. This is highly unusual as usually at this point it's raise or fold first in preflop. The small blind called and I got a free look with 63 off suit. The flop came down K 4 3. And it checked around.

Right at this time my food arrived. I handed the waitress a $20 bill and my $5 food coupon and asked for some change. She responded like I'd handed her a cactus wearing a small sombrero. The turn came out a 6 making me two pair and without thinking too much about it I bet out 5,000. The under the gun player quickly called and the waitress and I tried to find some common ground. To me it looked like maybe this guy had limped in with AA and was putting on the big slow play or maybe checked back a king looking to squeeze out some action as it was a rainbow board without any reasonable draws. The river was a 9 which looked like a total blank and my opponent only had about 12K left so I moved all in. He snap called me and rolled over 99! ACK! Now that the hand was over the waitress understood perfectly what I wanted and easily made me change on the spot. Stupid cursed Mongolian Beef!

This had me down to 20K but then I won five small to medium hands in less than 30 minutes all at the 1K/2K blinds level 1) I made it 7K to go over a 2K limp with KK, got one caller, bet the flop and won 2) I moved all in for 30K over a 5K raise from the small blind with 66 and took it down 3) I just called in the small blind 4 ways with 97 suited, called a 4K bet on the turn and won at show down on a 5 J J 7 3 run out 4) I raised a 2K limper to 9K with TT and took it down 5) I picked up 12K vs a short stack who had A2 and ran into my JJ. Numbered lists!

After being stuck around 35K all day and down to 10 big blinds a little earlier I was up to 69K with 60 players left. I was feeling so good that I took a picture of my chips!

Then I got into a tight spot. With blinds up to 1200/2400 with a 2400 ante I made it 7K to go from the cutoff with AT and the big blind moved all in for 29K. AT was almost certainly not the best hand here, but I was getting a good price. Specifically I had to call 22K to win 39.6K. I'd be about a 70/30 underdog against a hand like AK or QQ, but I'd only be a 55/45 dog against hands like 88 or 99 and a favorite against something like A9 suited or KQ suited. Probably I was in bad shape, but if there was a chance he was shoving small pairs I was getting the right price against his entire range of hands.

In the moment I took my time to count all the chips, figure out the exact pot odds I was getting and counted down my own stack to see I'd be left with 47K even if I called and lost. Usually if you're getting 2 to 1 pot odds preflop it's hard to fold and I decided the 1.9 to 1 I was getting was close enough. I called and my opponent proudly rolled over AQ. Uh oh. The flop came down 9 4 4 and I was thinking a chop would be nice. The turn was a 6 of spades putting 3 spades out there and I saw that my T was the only spade in play, but sadly the river was a red 3.

After 6 hours of play we took our third break and I came back to a 40K stack on the button with blinds of 2K/4K and a 4K ante. 49 players were left and average was 92K. I had 10 big blinds and it was going to cost me 10K a round in blinds and antes so I'd need to find something quick.

I folded 15 hands in a row none of which were even close and then I looked down at A2 in the hijack. This is close, but I think with 7.5 big blinds in the hijack any ace is good enough. I moved in and to my shock and horror the cutoff and then the button both instantly moved all in! It turned out I was up against AQ and AK. Oddly it's actually better for me to be up against two bigger aces than just one. In this case I was 20.0% to win an 4.4 % to tie but getting a little more than 3 to 1 on my money compared to 23.8% to win and 4.9% to tie getting a little more than 2 to 1 if I'd been just up against AK. Still a shitty spot though!

If I'd won, I would have had 100K exactly, but I bricked out and was eliminated in 44th place.

My $10,000 starting bankroll is at $10,920. Phase 1.3 is Wednesday and is another $380 event at Lucky Chances.