TOC Day 2: Getting Closer

I don't remember too much about the second day (the middle episode of a trilogy is always the one that sucks, right?). Although I do recall at one point dropping down to around 29K. At the dinner break I asked Bill, since his horse from Sunday had already busted out of the TOC, whether we might arrange a transfer of the horseshoe (after cleaning it off, of course).

Of course I was joking, but after the dinner break I got moved to a table that was again weak in the Omaha and stud rounds and I was able to build my stack back up and then some. Over the two days, for some reason, people kept trying to bluff me out of huge pots on the river. I picked off two busted draws with a pair of queens and a pair of eights, respectively. Also someone with a scary board turned out only to have two small pair, losing to my two medium pair.

Another key hand was where I started with rolled up queens. One person called the bring-in and Tex Morgan completed it with a J showing. I thought just calling would be suspicious given the way I'd been playing my stud hands, so I raised and got it heads up. Tex made open jacks on 5th and I just called his bet. I was going to raise on 6th but just called when he caught a card that looked straight/flush-oriented given his board. On the river I paired one of my up cards for Q's full and raised his bet. "You made your flush?" he inquired as he called. "No, I had rolled up queens and made a full house." If I recall correctly he did make trip jacks on 5th and had rivered a straight.

During the Omaha round I pulled an egregious suckout when someone raised all-in, I 3-bet him with As2c9cTc and everyone else folded. There was some discussion whether I really wanted to make an isolation raise, or whether I should just call to let others in since essentially I just have an A2 and want to get value for my low. In a ring game I would call but I thought in this situation I wanted to be sure I didn't face any more betting to get to the river (esp. if say a flush hits but no one has it but I get bluffed out anyway). Badger, what say you?

My all-in opponent showed something like AKKJ double suited. Oops. But what's this? The flop is QcJc8c! And just like that he has no outs.

Hm, actually I'm not sure when all these events took place relative to the dinner break. However I do know that I got slow rolled at dinner. I eschewed the buffet to go to the Canal Street Grille with my supporters, who had made reservations. I had to be back at 8, so we mentioned that to them when we got there at 7, on time for our reservation. The table seemed available but for some reason we did not get seated until 7:15. This still seemed like just enough time to eat and get back though, and we told the waiter I had to be out by 8 and he said no problem.

I'd expressed concern about going to a steak house since I wanted to eat light so as not to bog myself down afterwards, but we figured there would be other stuff to get there besides just steak. I decided on prime rib. "I thought you were going to eat light?" "Yeah, well, I've eaten a lot of prime rib, I can handle it."

7:30 comes and goes. We get our appetizers, followed some time later by our salads. "Um, are the entrees coming out soon?" "Oh yes, they're going to be right out." 7:45. I decide things are looking grim and I'd better finish all of my salad and eat some bread to be safe. 7:55. "Spencer, you have to go." Grrr.

Later on when they all came up from dinner Jack M. came over to me with a take-home box and said "Special delivery" with a grin but I was too nervous to eat it at that point. I always get nervous and stressed in a tournament when we start approaching the money and through the flat portions of the pay scale (you would think I would be less nervous during the flat portions since there is little difference in moving up one spot but I guess it's because I know there are a lot of spots to go to get to the real increases). I started ordering plain tonic water from the cocktail waitresses to settle my stomach.

I finished the day in decent chip position at $132,200. We drew our day 3 seats before bagging up all our chips, and after mine were counted and bagged I went around to find out who else was at my table. Just great. A tough lineup including Diego Cordovez who won a WSOP NL event this year, Mike Matusow a past WSOP winner, Hasan Habib who finished 4th in the big one this year, and Kevin Song. And Kevin and Mike were the two tournament chip leaders. I talked to various people I knew to see what I could find out about the other players and learned that they were tough, solid players as well.

Still, I was incredibly thrilled and excited to have made it not only into the money, but also to the final day. The 2nd day ended around 10:30 this year, and JP mentioned once or twice that when he was in my position last year it was 3 AM but I refuse to feel guilty for circumstances beyond my control :-)