The SBP Archives - Your less than frequent dose of SBP!

Okay, it's not a cash prize or anything, but it's a start! Starting at 11am, and playing until the dinner break at 6pm, all remaining participants in the WSOP circuit event got a $10 food voucher to use until play resumed at 7pm. Nice! Now I wasn't all that hungry if you can believe it, and when I busted out just after 8pm (my pocket nines got outdrawn against an Ace-Queen), the canteen area was shut down and thus I was stuck with an expired voucher. But hey, this is the longest I've ever lasted in a tournament, and you got to start somewhere, right? (just agree with me!) so I have a little keepsake to remember the experience.

Both tournaments I started off really well, doubling from 12,000 to over 24,000 in chips in the first tournament, while the next I moved from 8,000 to about 13,000. Both times, after the good start, I had quite a string of bad cards to deal with that made things somewhat frustrating. When I was in late position to try to make a move at the blinds, I'd see a raise followed by a re-raise so I was handcuffed from really trying anything. Pots were tightly contested the later it got, and it was very expensive to get involved with the blinds and antes increasing quickly. At that point, I didn't have a lot of chips to "speculate" so I had to be patient and wait for decent starting hands before I got involved.

And just to show you hard it is, my friends didn't have luck on their side either, and if the cards were a little nicer they might have contested for a money finish. Paul had pocket jacks and was beaten by a river King after getting all the chips in the middle after the flop was just nine-high. Dan held a King-Queen and the flop had two Kings, a nice flop to say the least. His opponent had King-Ten and, after getting all of their chips in, outdrew Dan with a ten on the turn giving him a full house. John played an Ace-King hard pre-flop and couldn't improve against pocket 9s and couldn't win another pot after being severely crippled. Myself, I lost a race the first tournament to have any hope of continuing, while the second tournament, somewhat shortstacked, looked at a raise in front of me while I held pocket Kings. This is what I was waiting for to get back into contention, but the 2nd best starting hand in hold 'em was unfortunately up against the best hand, pocket Aces. Weird also was this was the 2nd time in these big tournaments where I had Kings, only to run into Aces. I got a bit of a tease as the board was all diamonds and another diamond would have given me a flush, but it didn't happen. The previous two hands I witnessed, one guy was getting ready to leave but hit a five on the river to make trips. The next hand, pocket 9s cracked aces by rivering a flush. Guess Lady Luck figured there were too many Aces getting beat so it was my turn to go to the rail. But that's how it goes sometimes.

Guess the point is despite the above scenarios, I don't think any of us played poorly, and as you can see, you do need some cooperation with the cards to contest for a high position. I imagine we will all try it again, and maybe next time we won't have a disappointing story to tell you.