~~ Bridgie Daily Poker Blog ~~10/28/07

Ok, I know I haven't done a Daily F**king Poker Blog in a while, so here's a new one.

I was playing in the Omaha Hi multi-table with 800 peeps and caught a break in the first hour when suddenly there was no one playing at my table so I scooped the blinds on about 30 hands in a row, which is a stress free way to build a stack. So I had 27K at the first break with still 362 peeps left so that set me up for the second hour.

I was grinding along like I tend to do with a medium sized stack hoping to get hot when came the hand of the night (for me). Going into the hand I guess I had 40-something thousand chips with 80-90 peeps left. I got dealt A-J-7-7 and the flop was 5-8-Q. I'm thinking, ok, I've pretty much missed everything and if I catch a 7 on the turn it probably makes a straight for one of the 3 other players in the hand so if there's a bet here, I'm going to fold. I'm last to act, and it goes check-check-check to me, so I get to check and see another card, not that i'm too thrilled about it, but a free card is a free card, right? The turn card is another 5 pairing the board. It still missed me, but now a 7 on the river would give me a boat so I wouldn't have to worry about the straights. Still, it's just the turn, I don't have the boat yet, so if someone bets here (3,200 is the bet level we were at), I would again, probably just fold since there were only two outs (7s) that could make my hand (not counting a third 5 as an out as then someone with a higher pocket pair could get me). But, again the betting goes check-check-check, so I check again and take the free river card. Of course the river is a 7 and I'm thinking boy did this play out perfect or what? But here's where it gets good, the betting after the river goes 3,200-raise to 6,400-raise to 9,600 to me. I'm thinking what the f**k is going on here? When the board paired on the turn, did someone slow play a boat? I had to consider that because 8s full or Qs full would beat me. And 8s or Qs full would mean that they flopped a set and checked there, too. So I just decided there is no way they would not bet that at this stage of the tournament when everyone is scrambling to increase their stacks. So my conclusion was I had the best hand and raised it to 12,800 (the last raise) and got call-call-call and scooped a humongous pot. I went to the hand history to see what they had. The first guy had 9-6 (for a 9 high straight). The second guy had 9-6 also, and the third guy (you really have to question his sanity here) had 4-6 for the 8 high straight and that was the guy who raised it to 9,600! Of course as you have all probably heard me preach, "Board pair, flush (or straight) beware" so of course were I in there shoes no way I'm even betting much less raising in that situation. Anyway that hand got me to 93K in chips and from there I was able to maneuver my way to my 27th Final Table. Yay!

The last hand before the final table there were 11 left and three got knocked out, so only 8 got to enjoy playing at the final table. Of the 8, I was in 6th place so I didn't have high expectations with a fairly short stack (101K) and the leader at 1 million chips. But I won a couple of nice pots and found myself in 2nd place with over 600K when all of a sudden a Mutt-frenzy™ broke out where just about every hand pre-flop was costing the big blind times 3 to see the flop. With marginal cards and the size of those blinds, I just started folding a lot. Finally the big stack mutt (female) wore down the other mutt, who was also female by the way (female mutts are rare) and I was in the final two, but because I had played so few of the hands the big stack had 2 million chips and I just had 358K. I had to play the "check and call" game with her because, with the big stack, she bet almost every station of every hand and ultimately, she got me. So I finished 2nd.