One of the unintended consequences of Harrah's decision to re-allow Richard "Quiet Lion" Brodie to play the 2007 WSOP ME is that Richard Brodie then busted me out of the tournament.
In another, more accurate, way, I busted myself out of the tournament, essentially turning the biggest event of the year into the equivalent of a $100-rebuy and flipping a coin for my stack in level two.
I ended level one with only half of my 20K starting stack remaining, after slightly misplaying a flopped set, running into some common chip-burning situations, and spewing a little.
When I came back from break, I picked up a few pots and was sitting on a workable 13,500 when my bust hand versus Brodie took place.
I raised AKo UTG to 600 (blinds were 100/200) and one of the seven weak-tight-passive-predictable guys at the table called in the cutoff. Quiet Lion (who started the hand with somewhere around 18-20K I think) was next to act and appeared to face a decision. After a moment, he made it 2600.
I thought there was a fair chance he could be picking on me and the caller with a less-than-monstrous hand, or that he might opt not to gamble with some of the better hands he had, like TT-QQ. That, plus the fact the pot already represented over 25% of my stack (and, shit, AK beats KK some absurd percentage of the time, anyway, if he has that!), compelled me to push. I pushed.
The original caller folded and Brodie, after thinking for a minute or so, called with a pair of jacks, which won the pot.
The main reason my play was bad is that I could have found many better situations in the tournament, had only invested 600 chips in the pot, and, based on my tilt-y table image, I was more likely to get called by Brodie's middle/high pairs and forced to gamble for my stack.
Incidentally, I think folding, rather than calling, would have been the best option in the situation, and I don't think my play is disastrous on its merits, but considering the magnitude of this particular tournament, it represents a type of meltdown.
***
I'm currently in a sort of limbo, but my tentative plan is to go home for a few days, then return to play the Bellagio Cup main event on Wednesday.
The World Series of Poker ended on a lackluster note, but after an inadvertent pep talk from an old friend of mine, I feel optimistic about my potential to shift things around in my mind and have a fruitful second half of 2007.
I intend to post an anthology of the 13 events I played at the WSOP, and other various successes, failures and observations from the trip, sometime in the next week or so.
