Pro Poker Experiment Day 2

Kory told me they were running some juicy promotions at Fort McDowell, so I decided to make the hour long drive out there on Friday afternoon. In a new promotion, every time you get pocket Aces, you either win the pot with the best hand or if it gets cracked, they count up the pot and award you that amount.

Plus they had your normal bad beat jackpot going along with some weird computerized drawing. If they called your name, the dealer would deal two cards. If the cards paired then you won some kind of progressive jackpot.

They were also running a $30 tournament at 7:00 PM in which if you played 3 hours before, you could win $60 in bounties for every elimination.

Unfortunately, I got a little bit of a late start so I only got 2 hours of cash games in before the 7:00 PM tournament. So instead of $60 bounties, I would be eligible for $40. I believe the tournament started with around 80 players.

I couldn't get much going in the cash games and cashed out down $27. I started out strong in the tournament with some good hands early. After my strong start, we had a short stack call, and then Kory, who happened to draw my table, raised him. I looked down to see pocket Kings. The normal play is to reraise and isolate Kory, however I thought if I reraise, it will just allow the short stack to fold and I can't win his bounty. Kory was deep enough that I didn't think I could get his whole stack just yet.

So I decided to call and the small stack called the raise. The flop was all clubs and low cards. They both checked to me and I made a pot sized bet since I didn't want them to draw. The small stack called, and Kory raised all in. I call. The small stack was not on a flush draw and had an underpair. Kory had QQ with no clubs as well. It looked pretty good for me to pick up two bounties and a lot of chips, but Kory spiked a Queen on the river to suck out. That left me with a little under 5k in chips.

The very next hand, I picked up AA. I raised and got one caller in the blinds. The flop was king high. He checked, I bet, and he check raised me all in. I snap call and he has a king. I fade his outs and I am back up to my starting stack.

I started to accumulate chips and even knocked off a bounty to win my buy in plus a little extra. My table was getting steamed up because I was raising a lot of hands before the flop. Probably 70% of the time, I had a raising hand since I was definitely running good. But since no one was playing back at me, I was feeling pretty confident in that most of the players at the table would fold if I made any kind of continuation bet on the flop.

Even though we started with 10,000 in chips and the first level was 25-50, the structure was very fast. First of all the levels were only 15 minutes. Secondly, once everyone got short and there was a 3 or more way all in, the side pots became very difficult to calculate and it would take 5 minutes to play out the hand with all the crazy chip counts.

Sadly after the first hour, my table broke and I had to build up a new image. I began to go card dead and with the blinds increasing, I didn't have the flexibility to play crazy.

I tried to steal where I could, but got caught once and it left me relatively short. After that, I just sat back and watched players bust on every hand.

I managed an occasional double up but I had less than 7 BB from 35 players on. Somehow I managed to make the final two tables and the bust out craziness was continuing. Every time I would even see a remotely playable hand, someone was all in before I had the chance to push. I was getting a little frustrated, but what could I do?

At the second break we were down to 11 players and 10 were going to get paid. I think the blinds were 15k-30k with a 1k ante. I had around 50k and the blinds were going to hit me in 2 hands. I was talking with Kory, who had busted out and was playing a cash game, and we discussed strategy. We decided that my best bet was to fold and hope to make the $80 min cash. The player on my left had even less chips than me, and even though I would go through the blind first, there was a good chance that someone else may bust.

Sure enough when I folded under the gun, three other players at my table were all in. We had an elimination and then we got to the redraw for the final table. Somehow I drew the button. Meanwhile I threw out the idea of a ten way chop since the blinds were so high. Most were ok with that since it would have guaranteed $180 to everyone which was a little better than 4th place money. The chip leader wanted to save some for first place so eventually we agreed on $200 in addition for first and everyone else got $160.

I busted out in 7th when my pocket 7's went down in a 3 way pot and I cashed my $160. Plus I had managed to pick up 2 bounties for $40 each. So $240 in winnings, less $40 for the tournament and less $27 in cash game losses left me with a profit of $173.

So my 2 day experiment ended up with me winning just over $1000 and paying for my new golf clubs.

What a run!