"The Professional" continues to rule the POTY

The Tuesday before Thanksgiving, there was a poker tournament at work. Even though I had the week off, I decided to play. I was doing pretty good. Got to the final two playing heads up. I had about two times as many chips as my opponent. He wanted to make a deal. There was a $100 difference between first and second place price money (1st place paid $300, 2nd paid $200). We would split 1st place (for Player of the Year points) and he would take $35 while I would take $65. In retrospect, this wasn't a bad deal, but given our stack sizes, I offered him $30. Now in reality, the extra $5 is not a big deal, but egos were involved which made the $5 seem more than it was. He decided not to take the deal.

Details of what happens next follows...

So the next hand, I'm on the button with the small blind. I look down and see A3o. Heads up any Ace is pretty strong and definately a favorite over a random hand. I believe the blinds were $2000/$4000. I raise to $12000 (I had ~$50000, he had ~$25000). He goes all-in. At this point, it was a pretty easy call. I was getting about 3.3:1 on my money. I call and he shows pocket 9's. Crap!

His nines hold up and now I'm the short stack. We play a few more hands, but nothing really happens. He offers the deal I offered him which is to take $30 and quit. I decide to take the offer because I was upset on how that hand played out and also for not taking the initial deal. However, after accepting the deal, I was thinking that I probably should have just played it out.

In any case, the leaderboard was finally updated today and I gained 259 points for a total of 1584 points staying in 1st place with a pretty good lead. Places 2-10 are much closer (where most places differ by less than 100 points). 2nd place right now has 1051 points and 3rd has 949. Generally winning a tournament will net ~300 points, so 2nd or 3rd place would have to win two and I would have to not place at all to lost my top spot. With only one month to go, I'm pretty sure I'll keep my spot.

I don't think I mentioned my nickname that was given to me. They call me "The Professional". The reason is that when I made it to the WSOP Main Event this year, I had mentioned that I would go pro if I won the Main Event or even made it to the final table. However, that didn't happen, but the nickname stuck. It's much better than some of the other nicknames that have been given out: "The Turtle", "The Lemur", "The Mouse", "The Grinch", and the worst one is "Brokeback". Most of the nicknames are based on a person's playing style, but "Brokeback" was because this one particularly player got pocket Kings (twice I think) and lost each time. Pocket Kings are also called "Cowboys". So his "Cowboys" got screwed, hence "Brokeback". At least he has a good sense of humor about it.