By nath on September 17th, 2007 (more posts by author)

On a whim-- well, not quite a whim, but a moment of inspiration-- I decided to jet from Austin City Limits early on Day 3 and play the WCOOP event and the FTP $500. I thought I'd try to run up some chips early on, and if that failed, I'd go back to the festival.

I wouldn't have done it for an ordinary Sunday, and I wouldn't have done it for anything I'd never seen before. But something about how the day was going, and my mentality, said it was the right time. So I went with it.

Oddly enough, I did not run up a stack in the WCOOP; in fact, I donked off a bunch early, and I think actually dropped under 3k at one point. I fought back, though-- and even though I hit an occasional cooler, I fought back again.

Meanwhile, I caught a nice run early on Full Tilt, but all in all it was very wild and swingy, as I would win a big pot then lose some of it back on a cooler or other setup. Anyway, it's not important, because i bluffed off 20k at 170/340/25 with a straight draw vs. top set on the turn.

On Stars, however, I was winning all my races and major showdowns. I won some critical pots at the right time, and the structure afforded me the luxury of patience. With a couple of critical big pots where I eliminated people with AKo > A9s and QQ > AKs, I had jumped up to 625k at 3k/6k/600. I took a hit from there, but I was having a relatively easy time chipping it back with small pots. Then a couple of nice river value bets and I cleared 1 million for the first time, at 5k/10k/1k.

Then I started losing my focus. I made a call in a blind battle that in retrospect I think is poor (I had top pair, but my opponent was exhibiting extreme strength and was an unknown who'd shown nothing but straightforwardness). I chipped back up after losing something like 40% of my stack there. Then I hit a stretch of mediocre cards and my table started reraising me frequently. My spots weren't as good. I was getting my money in behind. Then I finally made a bad shove with AQ over a raise (a few hands after I'd doubled up) and lost to AA to bust in 57th.

I have a bad tendency to bust immediately after getting the double-up that puts me back in contention. It happened last Sunday, too.

Still, 57th is about $6,000, which will help. I'm gonna try to play more of the WCOOP events, but I'm not sure which ones. I need a good night's sleep before I make any decisions like that.

There were a lot of interesting hands and decisions from this one. I may post some of the hands here or on 2+2, or put up a hand history for viewing.