Things going a bit better now. After deciding to quit online and Chinese poker for this trip my live game has improved significantly and I feel that I’m playing to my A-game. The first tournament that I played as a new born “tournament only player” I came 14 / 850, after losing all my chips with AK vs. A10 all in pre flop vs. Scott Bohlman. It’s always brutal to come close and not making it but I was happy to be playing good again.
My next tournament was the Heads Up World Championship. I got a bye for the first round and played some random kid I never met before in round two. He played ok, but he went broke when I flopped the nut straight and trapped him. In round three however, I got the absolute worst draw I could hope for.
I was up against my good friend and heads up specialist Patrik Antonius.
How’s that for a draw?
I don’t really want to get into the specifics of the heads up at this point as my future opponents would get too much information about my play and could use that against me. I’ll walk you bye a few key hands of the battle of the Finns however.
About 5 minutes into the heads up Patrik flopped a broadway straight and I had a straight flush draw and a pair. I also made two pair on the turn and this hand ended up costing me about half my stack. I lost a few pots quickly after this, being somewhat cold decked, and was down to about 5k, having started with 40k in chips. Patrik now had a 15 to 1 chip lead. Ouch.
Then our all in fest started. First I was all in with A6 vs. A3 and won. Then K6 vs. K8 and chopped (wow, this was a big one) and then came one of the sickest all ins of the heads up. I pushed with A7 and Patrik called with K9. The flop came K93 and I stood up to shake Patrik’s hand. The Ace on the turn gave me some outs however and as the 7 fell on the river I had escaped elimination once again. Now I had clawed myself back up to about 27k in chips and we had a game again.
We went back and forth for a while now and were pretty much the only two guys still playing. I finally got the chip when value bet the river with 2nd pair on a paired board. The very next hand after getting the chip lead Patrik limped on the button and I raised it up to 13k (blinds were 1.5k and 3k) with AKs. Patrik then shovedall in and I called. Pat made a move with JTo and my AK held up.
During the heads up Patrik played great and was a really tough opponent, by far the toughest I played heads up so far. He was very unlucky to lose all the races when I was all in. He did, however, screw up on the last hand so I don’t really feel bad about beating my friend.
As I’m writing this I just beat John Hanson (a high stakes player from New York who beat me and Barry Greenstein in a 225k PLO pot last summer with an ace high flush draw vs. my middle set and Barry’s over pair and king high flush draw). In this match I ran pretty good and crippled John when I flopped the top set of nines. My next match is in 2.5h against either Eric Lynch or some random dude named Paradiso. I guess I have to hope I face this Paradiso guy in the next round.
