Prelims At The Master Classics
It’s good to be back at Amsterdam again. This is my fifth visit to this festival and I think it is still the best on the circuit. I’ve had three shots at garnering some points this week and went pretty close in two, with two very minor money-back finishes. Still, it feels good to be once again getting some chips and going deep and hey, I even got to post a winning cash game session, what in the hell’s going on??
I was lucky to play in the first 200NL re-buy event, getting in as one of just ten alternates; my pre-registration by fax got messed up somehow, but lucky me, I mix with an impressive crowd, one of whom sent his butler type guy over on a plane last week to buy us all-in to the maxed out 1000NL and 5000NL events.
My name eventually got called for the 200NL with about thirty minutes remaining and initial signs of a good run weren’t promising. Fortunately, The Camel got moved to the table next to me, we got the beers in and I happily stayed out of trouble, blinding my already very lean 2000 stack down to 1000 before I found a favourable situation or two.
That table eventually broke and as I walked up to my new table I spotted them dealing me into the BB. What luck. Some bloke raised and then Kim Callow moved all-in on the button. It was probably the beer but I was unable to suppress a huge grin as I looked down and found the cowboys. The bullets arrived not long after to elevate me to the 20k mark and a few hours later, in the money, with three tables to go I was one of the chip leaders with 80k.
Unfortunately, three hands later I was out. The first was a raise (9-10s), bet the flop (Q,2,3) and pass type situation, the second J-J into Q-Q and the last was A-K into A-A. In hindsight perhaps I shouldn’t have stopped drinking.
Chips were got in the 1000NL but once again it was my hard to shake blind spot that got the better of me, as I couldn’t resist the all-in heave with tens against what turned out to be an unfoldable pair of aces.
Yesterday, after an embarrassing pocket lightening re-buy period during the Omaha comp I finally started to enjoy myself, completely over-valuing my hands but tending to get away with it. The Holland Casino add money for 27th thru to 19th with the real money starting at the last two tables.
Down to three tables again, I was by now getting low and we must have been playing on the real money bubble for an hour when, six handed, with 17k left I made it 7k holding Q,Q,8,6. There was one lady left in the comp who, if she raised, always had the aces. She immediately moved in behind me. Marvellous. She stood up and with nothing to lose I asked her if she had aces, to which she very kindly nodded. I swallowed and mucked and yes she showed me two aces. What a sick fold.
Marc Goodwin polished me off a couple of hands later when I took a stand from the BB with the mighty 10,5,3,2. In hindsight I didn’t have to go broke on that hand as everyone had passed to his SB and he just made it up. He was getting short too though and I elected to get my chips in first regardless of my hand, figuring him maybe a 50/50 for a fold, but he had been kinda trapping with a couple of high cards. What was more annoying was that Marcel Luske donked off his big stack like ten seconds later and got two grand compared to my pauper-like three hundred.
It’s super satellite day today, which means a day off and the coffee houses, I mean some shopping, beckons.