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ARTICLE: MIRAGE WPT

I was feeling good about my game and was eager to play in this event. With 384 players, there were some juicy tables, nut mine wasn’t one of them. I was in the 3-seat. To my right were Eli Elizera, and Kathy Liebert. To my left Freddy Bonyadi, Don Barton, David Pham and David Sklansky.

I heard a good story about the ridiculous f-bomb rule. A guy was in the late stages of a big event and picked up two kings. A player raised and he came over the top. The other player was seriously considering giving him action when he uttered the forbidden word. The tournament director found it so offensive that he not only invoked a penalty, but he deemed it necessary to kill the players hand as well, essentially punishing the innocent player with the kings. This is getting out of hand.

Starting with 20k, I drifted down to 10k during the first few levels without winning a pot. Seemed like my opponents hit every flop and I missed, or when I did hit the flop it hit someone harder. At the 100-200 level, I limped on the button after three other limper with 54. The SB called so it was a six-way pot. The flop came K-5-5 rainbow. It was checked to Eli, who made a good-sized bet of 1100. I put him on a king and just called, hoping to milk him for more later in the hand, although he’s tricky and could have a five. Then Freddy made it 5000. At this point if I play it’s going to be for all my chips. It was possible that he read Eli as weak and figured I did the same and was preparing to make a play it him, and was making a big steal move. But, I thought it much more likely that he had a five. If that was the case I probably had kicker problems and was in bad shape, so I laid it down.

My table broke and I was happy for the change of venue. I had about 10k.

The only ones I knew at this table were Al Krux and Fred Sigur, who’s been around a long time and used to play BJ tournaments with me back in the ‘80s. He had a big stack and was running over the table. To my left was a guy named Jim, who told me had been in Reno last year when I was at the final table, and had lost money betting on me. Sorry Jim, I wasn’t happy either.

I won a couple pf pots, one with Th8h when I flopped a flush draw and hit a ten on the river. In the other I called a raise with AK, and picked up a couple of other callers. The flop came K-9-3 rainbow. I bet 1300 and got called by Jim on my left. The turn came another king. I knew if he had any kind of king I was going to double up. He didn’t, and folded to my bet. I was back to 15k.

I’d drifted back to 13k when a player raised from the one-hole. He was the type of player who needed a big hand to raise in that spot. I looked at AK and decided to take a flop and see what happened. The flop came K-8-4 rainbow and he bet. I wanted to find out right there if my hand was good. It was the kind of flop that he couldn’t call a raise without a hand at least as good as mine. If he’d just called and checked the turn, I’d likely have checked behind him, keeping the pot small enough that I wouldn’t get broke if I was beat. But, he’d raised, and enough to convince me that I’d have to play for the rest of my stack on the next bet, because there wasn’t any card that would slow him down if he had AA or KK. I figured the best I could hope for was a split, so I got away from it with enough chips to still have a good shot.

Nothing was happening and I was down to about 8k. I limped behind another limper with 22. Jim moved in behind me for about 4k. He’d been moving in a lot, and by the way he pushed it in quickly I was pretty sure he didn’t have a big hand. I made the call and it turned out to be correct, me being a small favorite over his AQ. The flop came 8-7-6. I thought I had a chance to win my first race in quite a while until a queen came on the turn. I was down to about 4k.

I moved in with AK vs A3, and the board came J-J-8-8-6 for a split. That hurt. I went on the break with about 3500. A gir