Blister In The Sun

A quick recap as this is a continuation of my previous post: So I had withstood a combined avalanche of my own bad play and a decidedly mediocre stretch of cards to break even at the Borgata and managed to snag the last seat on the bus to get me back home in time to my heads up poker tournament. This tourney is an offshoot of my monthly one, run by the same guy and usually featuring many of the familiar faces from those tournaments, albeit far fewer of the newcomers to the game. Not a tournament for which I should have been operating on two hours sleep and caffeine and expected to sail through. Stranger things have happened, though. And stranger things did...


Heads up is always an interesting time. Playing virtually every hand is an anomaly unless you are heads up. It's also fun as hell. Who doesn't want to be involved in each deal of the cards? More often than not it is with just two god-awful cards in hand, so the play is contingent on the player, not the cards. Because of this aspect it also allows terrific opportunities to set up an opponent who makes a lesser hand after you have pushed him around a bit.

So it was in my first match. Playing aggressively and raising, c-betting and re-raising nonstop, my opponent finally made a stand and shoved preflop when I re-raised him. Unfortunately for his AJ, this was a legitimate hand and my AK had him dominated and took him out. Bang. Fifteen minutes, one victory.

My second match saw me against a very, very aggressive player so I decided to mix it up a little bit, play a little slower and let my re-raises and other moves convey a little more power, all the while hoping to catch a big hand and disguise it, knowing that my opponent would likely make a move into it.

And it worked.

Kind of.

He raised (with 7,7 as it turns out). I peeked at Q,Q and re-raised. He didn't believe me and likely figured he could get me to fold anything except a premium hand, and shoved on me. Perfect. I called, of course. But the flop came 5,6,8. Ugh. The turn was a blank and he had 10 outs to get there. He got there the hard way, by flipping a river 7 to make trips.

So now I was in a quandary, left with only about 10% of chips in play. But I did have one slight advantage and I began to use it.

All in. All in. All in. All in.

Finally he called, and I was behind. We both made pairs on the flop but he made top and I made middle, until the river brought a beautiful, redemptive 7, making me trips and getting me healthy again. But then he took the initiative again and started popping each pot and I got whittled away, chip by chip. Finally, I made a move and got it in what I thought was in great shape - top pair, open ended. But he had a set and I was looking at 10 outs, same as he had earlier. And same as he had earlier, the 7 came on the river. Straight for me, double up.

On it went, back and forth like that. Any time the shorter stack went in, their hand held. Finally, at the 90 minute mark (playing 30 minute levels) with blinds about to go to 200/400, which would have been ridiculous for my stack, and basically made it an all-in each hand either way, I made a stand when the board threw out three nines. My opponent boated up and I was done, for now. For this was a double elimination event and I merely proceeded to the loser's bracket.

Once there, whether it was caffeine, adrenaline or the mid-afternoon sun, I perked up and played some pretty good poker. I made a tough call of a post-flop all-in holding 4,4 in my hand and it held against my opponent's ace high. I battled back in my next match from a 3:1 chip deficit, rallying to take it after over an hour. Then I went on a true rampage in my next match, winning in fewer than ten hands as the cards found me quickly and I took it right at my opponent with a barrage of raises that he had no answer to.

The tournament, however, was not completed. And it was an ugly reason why not.

A couple months ago, the host of this tournament had purchased a professional-quality arm wrestling table. At the events since then, people have taken shots at each other on this table, always for fun, and always entertaining. That day? Not so much. At one point, there was a sickening "CRACK" similar to if you had a thick tree branch and you somehow snapped it clean. I had thought that the table leg had cracked. Not so lucky. I turned to find one of the tournament players holding his arm where it had sickeningly broken, in the middle of the humerous bone (the large bone in your upper arm). Just a sick accident, but apparently not one uncommon to arm wrestling, as Wikipedia notes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arm_wrestling (see the "Avoiding Injury" section and the two pictures to the right of it, exactly what happened.) Straight to the emergency room he went and he awaits surgery in a few days. Just an ugly few minutes and we all felt awful for him.

Anyway, he was one of two guys left in the winner's bracket, while I had made my way to being the only one left in the loser's bracket. So play was obviously postponed and I await the loser of the other match to see who will advance to the finals against the winner. To win I'll need three straight wins, one against the loser of that match and two against the guy who advances from the winner's bracket, thus far unbeaten.

By this point it was about 8 pm and another full day of poker had been played. I was beat and needed to crash and crash I did. I will update the tournament results once it finishes.