Dream Dealer WSOP Satellite

My friend Jeff and his Dream Dealers tried to organize a satellite to send a couple of players to the World Series. His original dream was to get enough players at $200 a player to give away a Main Event seat. I did not have as high of hopes, but we did manage to get enough players to give away two $1500 packages.

We started with 18 players at two tables, $2000 in chips and 5-10 starting blinds. The levels were 25 minutes long. This may seem like a decent amount of play, but with players taking the game seriously there were a lot of long pondering decisions so we were only playing around 10 hands per level.

I started out well by winning the very first hand with King-Jack when I flopped a Jack and rivered a King. I did not get paid off on the river, but it was a decent $400 pot.

After that, there was a whole lot of missing flops and folding. Then I tried a silly bluff and gave away half my chips.

I had 66 in late position. I limped in with 3 others and saw a flop of 9-10-J. It was checked around and I checked behind. The turn was a Queen. The early player led out and the other two players folded. I had a feeling that I still had the best hand, but there were so many cards that could come on the river that would scare me, that I didn't know what to do.

I came up with the idea to raise him small and that way I could probably get to a free showdown at the river. I made the raise and he called me fairly quickly. This told me he did not have the straight. The river was another blank. My opponent checked. So I get the "free showdown", but instead of checking, I decide that I want to follow through and bluff again. I make another bet of about half the pot and he calls me down with J-T for two pair.

It may sound like I'm being results oriented when I say this was a bad bluff, but it really was.

So I sat on my 20 BB short stack for a while and studied the rest of the table. Eventually we hit the end of the rebuy period and I took the add on for another $2,000 in chips. The chip leader, David, was playing a lot of hands and was getting pretty lucky. I knew that if I could pick up a good hand that he was somebody that I would have to value bet hard, because he was willing to call a lot of chips with hands as bad as second pair.

Eventually I picked up pocket 3's under the gun. I limped and hoped everyone else would do the same. My wish was granted as 3 others came along for the ride. The flop was A-8-3. I checked and David bet 500. I had about 2500 left in my stack and I figured the best way to get all my money in the pot would be to min raise on the flop and then put the rest in on the turn. I raise to 1000 but David does me a favor and puts me all in. I snap call and David shows 8-3 suited. He had flopped bottom two pair and I had somehow hit the only other 3 in the deck to get my dominating hand.

I dodged his 2 outs and doubled up. I won a couple of small pots and was really starting to roll. I had 9,500 in chips with the blinds at 200-400.

Then I picked up Ace-King in the small blind. A decent player limped and David came along. I raised to 1,200. The decent player called and David folded. $3,200 in the pot and the flop was 8-9-3. I make the continuation bet of $1,500 and my opponent moves all in for $3,800. So it's $2,300 more to call in a $8,500 pot. I am getting 3.7 to 1 to make the call. If I make it and lose, I am down to 4,400 in chips which is still kind of playable, but the blinds will go to 300-600 in a few hands.

If my Aces and Kings are clean outs then I have 6 outs with 39 cards that do not help. According to the odds I have a 23% chance to win. The problem is that I could also be drawing dead if he has a set of 3', 8's, or 9's. I laid it down which I am still not sure if that was wise. He showed me pocket 2's. Good play on his part.

This left me pretty short when the blinds went up. I eventually moved all in from the cutoff with K-8. The same player who beat me with the pocket 2's was in the big blind. He hemmed and hawed for a minute and muttered how bad this call would be. He finally made it with J-9. Wow that's horrible! I tried to put the karma in my favor by also betting my last 3 tip chips, but he came over the top of me with $10 in tip chips. The top card in the window of the flop was a Jack and I could not spike the King. I was out in 8th place.

The good news is that Jeff set up this tournament so that the two people that end up going to Vegas will have to split 25% of their winnings with the other losers from the tournament. That means there is an extremely small chance that I might win some of my money back. We'll see if they actually go to Vegas.