The Professional stays at #1

Last night we had (most likely) the last poker tournament of the 2006 year that qualifies for POY points. Since everyone knew it was the last tournament, we had a decent turnout (about 25 players). There were 3 players who could possibly take over the number one spot were also playing, but each of them would have to win and I would have to not place. One of them "The Sizzle" busted out pretty early. After we combined to two tables, I made a questionable call to an all-in from a usually tight player. I had AQo UTG and had raised it to 1200 (blinds were 100/300). "The Hamburglar" was immediately after me and went all-in for about 3500 more. I had him covered by 100. I had less than average chips already and if I folded, I would have even less. Since I had already bet out 1200, he would have known I had a strong hand. So I figured he probably had a pair of some sort, most likely it would have been a coin flip if we went heads up. Since I need chips to win, I called. Results follow...


He showed AKo. His hand help up and I was crippled. I busted out the next hand as I was the BB so I was all-in regardless of my cars (which were 73o, although I did pair my 3, but lost anyways).

So there were two players left. One of them would have to win and not have #2 player place to take first. He ended up busting out. The #2 player later on became the chip lead and it looked like he had a good chance on winning the tournament and taking the #1 spot. However, he suffered two bad beats and busted out. There's some talk about a possible tournament next week, but I think most people will be on vacation so there won't be many players. Even if they have enough players, there wouldn't be enough points for someone to take over the #1 spot.

One of the things we had discussed in email before this tournament was the Tournament of Champions (TOC) that would include only the top 10 players. Current thinking is a deep stack (10,000 starting chips) tournament with $100 buy-in, winner take all. This was actually something many of the other players wanted to be involved in. Places 6-15 were all pretty close, so any player taking a win tonight could put themselves in the top 10 and push the current 10th person to 11th. By the end of the night "The Grinch" won the tournament putting himself in 6th place where before he was probably 14th or so. Next year should be interesting.

Although I didn't like busting out of the tournament, I played in the cash game afterwards. I turned $100 into $510 so I'm pretty happy with that. One of the players "Eeyore" was playing really loose. I called two of his bluffs and took away big pots. One of them was funny (to a poker player anyways). The pot was probably $200. He bet $50. I made a weak flush on the river (the game was Omaha). I had about $53.50 left. So I decide to just go all-in. He must have been on a stone cold bluff (nothing at all) as he couldn't even call my $3.50 more and mucked his hand. I, of course, didn't even have to show my hand to take down the pot. I took another large pot down when I called his bluff with a weak full house (such a thing exists in Omaha more often than in Hold'em).