WSOP 2007: ITM finally :)

7. June 2007 | Category: 50outs

What a day. I reached the televised final table of the $1,000 rebuy event.

I started at noon in the $2,000 NLH event fully aware that my second day in the $1,000+rebuys was starting at 2 a.m. – I was short in chips in the rebuy event so I figured my chances to stay there for quite some time as quite low. My strategy looked like this: get chips or die trying in the 2k event until 2 a.m., then concentrate on the rebuy. If I bust out of the first event, so what ? If I make it far in the rebuy event and have to be blinded off then may it be so. That strategy kind of worked here.

In the 2k event I doubled up after two minutes against Layne Flack who by now must hate me. I throwed him out near the final table bubble of the $5,000 seven card stud event back in 2001, in 2003 I took him out of the $5,000 Omaha high-low event and yesterday I cracked his :Ks:Kc with a mere :6h:4c. Shortly after I won a race with AK vs JJ and was at almost 14,000 chips after 30 minutes. I kept 12k of this for the first two hours and left my stack alone then going to the rebuy tournament. Average was like 90,000 chips there, I had 35,000. Still I hung in, stealing a little here and there but laying down big hands after reraises also – most promintently AJs and AQo in the big blind which did help my image on the table a lot (of course I showed this to the table) and was right in both laydowns – I would have been vs. AA and AKs.  As I started to get a few more chips (without any showdown) it became impossible for me to really play the two events. I was hardly able to follow the several seat movements. Still, after 4 hours of play in the rebuy tournament I had over 5k left in the 2k event which I brought in with :8x:8x when I was in the BB vs a LP raise (200/400 blinds, raise was 1600 so pushing was OK imo) who happened to have :As:Jh ands called – river :Ac ended my 2k event.

I was a little sad for not being able to play in the star studded 5k stud championship event but at the time this started I started to believe that I have a chance to go further in the rebuy tourney as I had a pretty good understanding of what happened on my table (if I could avoid or survive those nasty big pair vs big pair/AK situations). After all, 7stud is my best game, I made a final table in that event in 2001 and I like though competition. Anyway, I skipped it.

So in the rebuy I finally had two big hands with two tables left: UTG raised, he button called and I found :Qx:Q in my big blind and pushed. UTG did fold but the button called with :Ac:Qd and lost, doubling me up (I was very short at this time). Next I played against pbdrunks: all folded, he made raise in the small blind and I called holding :Qs:Jc after a while of thinking. Flop came out of a wet dream: :Qx:Jx:Jx, flopped boat for me. He checked, I checked. Turn was a rag 3 and he checked, now I was hard thinking what to do here. In finally decdided to make a weak looking steal bet, like 25% of my chips, adding a little bit hollywood – you know, looking at your chips, pondering how much you have if you lose or fold to a raise, hestitating and all that kind of stuff. When I did bet he took 10 seconds to went all-in and I of course called instantly. He had :6s:6c and was drawing dead. It turned out he had a little less chips than me so I was suddenly at almost 400,000 in chips, slightly above average.

That was it that day for me, I played no more hands. I did raise a few times but somebody reraised big and I had to give it up. Shortly after the 10 handed final table was setup there was an uggly small blind vs big blind situation where the SB had AKs and the BB had queens – an Ace on the river ended the day and brought me to final table. I am shortstacked there with 225,000 in a 2000/8000/16000 structure but I still have like 15 BB and being in the cutoff position, so everything can happen.