signs of life... tying up loose ends from months back

hello again my chickadees.

very little has happened since my last post.

errr... that's not entirely (or even remotely) accurate. i've been pretty busy and my dainty little typing fingers have been very, very lazy. considering my last post was close to two months ago i'll try to give a recap of march and april as briefly as possible. unfortunately, brevity's never been one of my strong suits.

Caesars AC

when i last posted i was at caesars in AC for some WSOP Circuit events. after bubbling a few of the prelim events, i made a deep run in the caesars 1k event. i made the final table with slightly below average chips, but picked up some big hands, won a rare 30/70 for about 1/3 of my chips, and steadily chipped up in mostly risk-free fashion. when we got 5-handed, i believe i was 2nd or 3rd in chips but the stacks were all fairly even . the blinds were quickly escalating and the prize distribution was even more top-heavy than usual. it broke down as follows:

1st $96,100
2nd 49,600
3rd 24,800
4th 21,700
5th 18,600

as you can see there was an enormous disparity between 1st and 5th-place money, and a much larger than usual gap between 1st and 3rd-place money. normally this would be a good time to start discussing a chop or payout redistribution. however, chris reslock was one of the remaining players and he never makes deals. so we played on. another level passed.

i believe we were a little more than halfway through the 12-24k blind level when reslock busted in 5th place. at this point i was 2nd in chips. in retrospect i should have brought up the idea of a deal right then. the chipleader was an amateurish player from montreal that spoke very little english. i wasn't certain he was going to understand talk of a deal. the kid who was the shortstack at the time did not seem terribly experienced either. the other player was frank calo, a 21-yr old internet player that played a hyper-aggressive style (Frankthetank on FTP and Rainetech on Stars). Frank was definitely my biggest threat at the table.

right before a break in play, i raised with KQo on the button, and frank shoved on me after a short time in the tank. he had reraise-shoved countless times at the FT and i knew his range in this spot was immensely wider than most players in this spot. i had him covered by approximately 100k (the stacks were something like 500k to 400k at the start of the hand if i remember correctly). my gut told me that i had the best hand. but the idea of a deal still had not been introduced and i didn't want to get crippled if my read was inaccurate or i got sucked out on. i couldn't pull the trigger. i folded and we went on the break.

i talked to one of my backers who thought maybe i should wait out the shortstack before discussing a chop. we resumed play at 15-30k blinds. frank shoved from the SB the first hand back. the shortstack called from the BB and showed 77. frank sheepishly tabled 92 offsuit. but the flop contained a 9 and we were down to 3. unfortunately, the last 2 pots had made frank pretty even with the chipleader and gave both of them a decided edge (over 2-1) on muggins. at this point i felt like i needed to double up before discussing a chop. unfortunately, i ran aj into frank's aq a few hands later and was out in third place. i was very disappointed in myself. i played great throughout the event but somehow a cat got my tongue (for once in my life) at the worst time and i left alot of money on the table. i read the tournament recap after the fact and discovered that the french canadian guy had won his entry into the tourney through a recreational poker league in quebec and had qualified for this event for a whopping total of $2. i also learned that Frank was 21 and it was one of his first live cashes. i'm pretty confident that they would have both been receptive to the idea of a chop. anyway, live and learn.

i ended up playing the $5k main event at Caesars as well. i started out extremely card-dead in this event and watched my 20k starting stack dwindle to around 10k. however, i went on a nice rush of cards midway through the first day and was able to steadily build to close to 100k at a pretty tough table. the epic syracuse vs uconn 6-overtime thriller was played that night, and as at least one of my eyes was focused on the television at all times, i played tight and solid and actively tried to avoid confrontations. i finished the day with 98k which was good for about 15th position with around 50 players remaining from the starting field of 208.

i was pretty wound up after the first day of the event and as i wasn't drinking at that time, i wasn't sure i was going to be able to fall asleep that night. a friend gave me a xanax and it put me right out. unfortunately i woke up the next morning only minutes before the start of the day and i was still pretty groggy. i made it to my new table in time for the first hand but was definitely rough around the edges. my boy mike leah was a few spots to my right and with about 50k in his stack and the blinds at 1200-2400 he opened to 5k in late position. i looked down at 1010 in the BB, and made it 20k to go, pot-committing myself in the process. mike shoved and i was forced to call, even though i was pretty certain that i am never ahead in this spot. AK is a big enough part of his range and my preflop raise precluded any guesswork. much to my chagrin he showed jj, which held and i lost more than half my stack.

shortly thereafter i was on the button with a6 offsuit. bill gazes was in the sb and beth shak was in the bb. my memory is a little cloudy but i believe i had about 45k, bill had around 32k and beth had around 25k. as i mentioned before i woke up groggy and still hadn't fully shaken off the cobwebs at this point. i looked down at A6 and decided to raise. already this is a mistake, as i believe this is a shove or fold situation based on stacksizes and blind level. my second mistake came when i tried to make it 7k, but accidentally threw out an extra 5-k chip so i made it 12k. gazes quickly shoved his remaining chips. if i made it 7k as intended, i could now fold, but once i made it 12k i was getting way too good a price to fold. i called and bill showed me a8. it was a pretty bold reshove but he did in fact have the best hand. the board rolled out 779. the turn was a 9. sweet! a chop! but then the river was a dreaded 8. puke. i was now crippled.

a few hands later i shoved my remaining 12k with a4o and was called by alex bolotin with j8. i flopped an ace and doubled up. i then shoved approximately 28k utg with 88 and beth shak called off her remaining 20k or so with A10. she flopped a 10 but i flopped an 8 and i busted her. i picked up one or two sets of blinds and then my table broke and i was moved to a new one with 70k or so in my stack. i didn't see a remotely playable hand the entire next level (1500-3K) and bled all the way down to 40k. we went on a break and were down to the final 36 players with 27 places paid.

we came back to 2k-4k blinds. i shoved all-in the first two hands and won the blinds uncontested. my stack grew to 50K+. i folded my big blind. the next hand, igor borukkov, a little russian hothead from new york raised to 10k in late position. he had a 250k+ stack. i looked down at 66 in the small blind. i sensed zero strength from igor, but knew he would call me pretty light because he was stubborn and hated to fold. i decided to go with the hand and shoved. he tanked for a few minutes and then called me with the Q10 offsuit. the door card was a glorious 6, but i still couldn't breathe easy as the entire flop read 6KJ leaving him drawing very live. the turn was clean, but the river was a filthy Ace, filling his straight. winning that pot would have nearly ensured me of a cash, and given me a fighting chance to final table the tourney. i finished only 6 or 7 spots from the money, the closest that i've ever come to cashing in a 5 or 10k event. my friends matt brady, jason young, david zeitlin, and frank vizza all final tabled the tournament, but all fell short of the big money. vizza had the best showing and finished in 3rd.

i was going to try to get all the way caught up to the present with this blog post, but i realize that my oral diarrhea makes that incredibly difficult. so i'll go ahead and publish this installment and hopefully complete the remaining posts by the end of this week before i hit the road again.