Done for tonight

Since the last entry …

I got up to about 80,000, and found a pair of sixes in the small blind. Everyone folded and I raised to 2200. MM in the big blind called. The flop was J 8 4. MM bet 2400, and I called. The next card was an ace. Representing an ace to the aggressive bettor, I bet 5000. He fired back with 17,500. Sigh …

70,100.

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JJ - Seat 8 raises to 1400 on my BB. I re-raise to 5000. He calls. Flop is a bunch of undercards - I bet 10,000. He folds.

75,100. I really need to slow down now.

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45s in the big blind. Seat 6 raises to 1500. I call. Flop is J 5 2. Seat 6 bets 1500 again. I raise to 4000. He announces his pocket treys are no good and folds.  

A few hands later, I have A8s. I raise to 2000. The Romanian guy calls. The flop has a king and not much else. We check. An 8 hits the turn, and I bet 4000. He folds.

84,600. 35 minutes left.

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At the end, I have 84,500. The Romanian guy and MM (whose name turns out to be Sam Haddad) both complement my play. The Romanian guy says, “Something happened over the day. You became tricky. I think someone caught you bluffing one time, otherwise you just kept taking pots and not showing.”

This is what I love about tournament poker. We played for ten hours, and eight of the original nine survived to Day 2. The scary Asian guy turned out to be very nice, as were the other seven guys.  We really didn’t get to know the replacement players in Seat 9, except to take their chips, but the rest of us are now, if not friends, at least rooting for each other going forward.

I really liked playing with Sam (who ended up being the big stack at the table with about 110,000 chips), so I gave him my contact information and offered to take him out to Nobu next time he visited Houston. He told me he’d send me an email - we’ll see if he does.

I don’t play again until Thursday the 7th at 11:00, PST.  My new table is Orange 555, Seat 8.  And I’ll get to know a new bunch of players as we slog on through the tournament.

Here are some pictures of Table 666 and my final stack:

Table 666

Seats 3, 4 and 5

The final stack!

And here’s what the room looks like:

Thanks everyone for reading this and for your kind words over the day - it means a lot to me.

But now, I'm off to bed.  I'll sleep in and then get a pedicure in the morning.  

Ah, the retired life!