Getting into Poker Part 4
by A_Junglen on 11/14/07
After finishing 2006 with my first 5 figure cashes and live tournament success I was ready to take my game to the "big leagues." After some last minute planning I found myself holding an itinerary with flights from Cleveland to Miami to the Bahamas (WPT-PCA), to Miami, to LAX, to Auckland NZ, to Melbourne for the Aussie Millions (then from Melbourne to LAX to Phoenix to Cleveland...ugh).
Talk about jumping out of the gate head-first, it was a hell of a trip.
Ray won a package to the PCA and was nice enough to let me stay in his room, while I bought in directly. Obviously I didn't have the roll for an $8k event, so I wound up selling around half of my action, same for the Aussie Millions.
The PCA is many poker players favorite stop on the circuit. PokerStars runs a TON of satellites to the event, which is held in the luxurious Atlantis Resort. While the resort was very beautiful, I found the service to be somewhat shady and pretty much everything was overpriced. The surrounding area was fairly poor, and I didn't feel very safe leaving the resort. Some of my friends went outside the resort and apparently one of them was threatened by a man with a gun. Nothing ended up happening, but after hearing that story I decided I wasn't going to leave the resort. There was plenty to do there anyways.
The tournament was a great experience, but ended in a very disappointing way. I built my stack up from 20k to around 45k when the last level of the day came, 400/800/100. I was moved to one of the toughest tables in the room, including Ray, bigjoe2003, Issac Haxton, and some other decent players. The seating order was Ray, then to his left was Joey, then me, then Issac on my left. Heh, Joe was bitching about his seat the whole time - he really did have the worst seat in the entire tournament.
My bustout hand was brutal. I was very focused and playing well all day and was ready for Day 1 to end and Day 2 to bring a new table draw. Unfortunately I busted out with about 2 hands left in the day.
400/800/100, I'm sitting on 45k in the SB, Haxton in the BB with 90k or so.
Folds to me in the SB, I open 3.5x to 2,800 with AKo. Issac re-raises to 10k, and I shove for 35k more.
He snap-called and showed 44.
Whaaaaa
The board bricked out, and I lost a 100k pot with 2 hands left in the day. Sigh.
I was pretty devastated. For what it's worth, Isaac is a very talented player, although I still think his call with 44 was marginal at best. He would go on to finish 2nd to Ryan Daut, and gobbo took 29th I believe.
After getting over busting out I ended up having a pretty good time hanging out with people. I met a lot of new friends and it was a good experience. That being said, I was ready for Australia. I thought I played really well at the PCA and wanted to have a good showing in Australia.
I roomed with Gobboboy (Jimmy Fricke), Aaron Been and Cameron White at the Crown Casino in Melbourne. Nassau to Melbourne is one of the longest flights in the world, and it was easily the worst travel experience I've ever had. It was such a relief when I got there.
The Crown Casino was one of the nicest casino's I've ever been to, and Melbourne was one of the coolest cities I've ever been to. I enjoyed the atmosphere significantly more than the Bahamas, but I'm much more of a city guy than a beach person, so take that for what it's worth.
I entered Day 3 18th in chips out of 80, and Jimmy was in the top 3 or so. it was pretty awesome. Unfortunately Day 3 didn't go so well for me. I ended up playing worse than I'm capable of, ran bad, and eventally I found myself all-in preflop with AQ vs AK for about 500k. I failed to suck out and placed 55th for $20,000 Australian Dollars (16.5k USD), my first major event cash.
As I'm sure most of you know, Gobbo ended up taking 2nd for $1mil Australian. It was an awesome time. I also recall winning the $30r on UB while in Australia for $5.4k.
My game was developing at a very fast rate and I was gaining confidence. Tough to believe this all occurred less than a year ago.
Well, that's it for now. I haven't decided if I'll continue this series of blogs, simply because a lot of the stuff wasn't even that long ago. We'll see though. Thanks for reading.
Comments
Anonymous says
What a year! How did you do this past Sunday?11/14/07
harlem says
The fact that you have such success is a tribute the way you play the game. Keep the updates coming.
11/15/07
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