Main event, day 4, Friday 11th JulyWow, I really wish these days were an hour longer, I always want to write more hands. However, the long days and very short turnover (I am a man who needs my eight hours sleep!) have really made me appreciate the marathon nature of the Main Event. I'm sure I have played 4 consecutive 10 hour days earlier this Summer and felt fine (in 3/4 different events), but this feels so different, and there have already been signs of the long stretch taking its toll on some people.
The other thing that I only realised properly for the first time today is the wonderful, tense, pantomime nature of the Main Event. There really is a buzz that increases every day as you enter the Rio cardroom, and it did so exponentially today with the arrival of the TV cameras. Indeed, I fully experienced the most pantomine (but great) moment of all, as I was all-in at risk on the bubble. There is no poker tournament anything like this.
Here áre as many hands as I can fit in:
The pre bubble-short stack grindI went back with exactly 100k. It started frustratingly. Down to 80k, I raised
, and an Italian player who was already revealing himself to be very loose, peeled the button. He won the pot with came
with
. Down to 58k.
The next hand, I raise to 8,200 with
, and the Italian peels the cutoff. The button, who seemed a good internet player, squeezed to 24k. I thought hard about going with it, given how great the squeeze spot now seemed, but decided against it. It was my only pull-out of the day.
About an hour in, at 72k, I'm shortest at the table, bubble talk has begun in earnest, and I'm sure they are feeling that it is me that is under threat. Daniel Alaei raises my blind to 8,200 from UTG+2, I have
, and think it's a great spot to 3-bet bluff, and do so to 23k. He folds.
Last hand of the level, 10 from the money, he raises to 8,200 again on my big blind. At a fairly novice table, it has the kind of feel that most people are half-leaving ready for break already, and so Alaei's spot on my big blind feels super strong. I have 62k, and have
, and decide it has to be a push. I move in, he folds.
Shortly after the break, we are quickly three from the money, and the pandemonium of hand-for-hand begins.
Now two from the money, it is folded to me, and I have
and 72k on the button. I raise to 12k, Alaei defends.
It comes
. He checks, I bet 12k to induce some kind of check-raise bubble bluff, but instead he picks up a fistful of orange 5k chips and puts me in. (The update is wrong about this hand by the way, he basically check-raised all in).
I snapped, and he was kind enough to show his hand straight away. I would be in good shape against
.
Five players in total are all-in. I have no experience of this situation before, and wrongly imagine that the remaining two cards will deal my fate soon point very soon. I am wrong. Players are standing on their chairs, cameras are rushing about, and a tense air fills the room. From having felt fine and fairly accepting of leaving with a smile should a 9 arrive, I soon find myself jumping on the spot with nerves. It soon emerges that of the five all-ins, mine cruelly will be dealt last.
It's not so much the $18k for me and my backers that I am sweating. It's not even the 170k pot in the tournament. It's the possibility of being
that guy; the unlucky bubble boy, having to fight my way through the crowds with a broken heart. It's the being congratulated by Jack Effel on our three way chop of the min cash, and the continuing fan-fare of having of playing higher or lower on a card to try to win a seat for next year. Would I be able to go through all this, and still have a smile on my face?
After twenty minutes, it's my turn, and the cameras swirl round my table, as well as the hundreds of media and spectators. They aren't there to see the shortie survive his three outer, and make it to the cash. They are there to capture the three-outer beat, and see the poor shortie have his dreams crushed. Having started feeling fine, I am now strangely feeling as nervous as I ever have in my life.
I don't remember the run out of the board. I remember there was no nine. It feels like it's all over, and I can go and lie down in a dark room for the rest of the day. I realise there is a very important poker tournament about to re-start. I sit, down three bottles of water, and get ready to play.
I might be just a bit too tired to describe the interesting spots, but overall I feel things went well.
Whilst not so interesting, the important spots were two hands late on. I raised with QQ from the cut-off at 4k/8k, the button pushes 95k, I call and he has
. We survive, and are up to 520k.
Still at 4k/8k, it folds rounds to my small blind, against a British guy in the big. He has 140k. I raise to 21k with
, he ships, I snap, and he has
.
We have a sweat on
, but survive. Up to 660k.
I reached a height of 855k, and played an interesting pot on the third last hand of the night.
I raised
from the cut-off to 21k, Steve Warburton (playing 480k) 3-bet the small blind to 52k, and I decided I had a great spot to 4-bet bluff to 102k. I actually had a pretty clean image at the new table, I always feel the end of the night plays some factor, and most of all, he had a stack too big and awkward to easily 5-bet shove.
He thought for literally ten minutes. He looked agonised. I guess that didn't matter, he knew I was either snap-calling, or snap-folding. The clock was called by a player not in the pot. He soon shoved. I folded. A shame to have him make the right big decision, but the 4-bet felt right.
So, back to day 5 with 692k. The seat draw is out there somewhere in the ether, but I'm going to bed. Will try to update it in the morning.
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