I just finished third in the Caesars event. This tacks another $20,000 score onto my resume, but I feel a stronger sense of disappointment than accomplishment in the wake of the tournament. I honestly thought I was going to win the thing. Am I turning into a spoiled brat?
When play resumed with 12 players left, I was the chip leader. I won two sizable pots immediately, and when we settled in to play the final table, I was way out ahead of the field. Then, seated at a full final table with a gradually graded prize structure, I struggled through a long drought of trash hands. I surmised that the only proper strategy was patience. I picked a few spots here and there and mostly withstood my restealing urges, basically folding my way down to three-handed.
At that point in time, I was the second largest stack. In the very first hand of three-handed play, with the blinds at 16,000-32,000 I openraised the button to 85,000 with A-8 offsuit, and the small stack in the big blind shoved for around 350,000. I was sitting on around 700,000, which turned out to be the deciding factor in my decision to gamble with the short stack, who had been playing pretty tight. I made the call. The small stack (and eventual winner) had A-J, and it held up. A few hands later I ran another A-8 into A-K, and that was all she wrote.
I feel like a lot of less accomplished players might have donked off their chips earlier. Still, I felt like I was the chalk in this thing and should have figured out a way to win it.
Oh, and for those of you keeping score at home, I drove through a nasty storm and made it to Philly just in time for tipoff. Cornell beat Penn in a squeaker before a surprisingly fiesty crowd at the Palestra.
And thus ends a blog entry by a guy whining about winning 20 grand. 🙂
davidzeitlin 
congrats Z. 20 large is nothing to feel bad about. It sounds like 2008 is off to a hot start — i’m sure there are a lot of wins to come still.
Kudos again…you luckbox you. =-P
Sincerely,
An Aspiring Luckbox
Been pretty busy of late and haven’t been able to check the blog but good job, D!
Hey David, I’m the luckbox who ended up winning event 2. The poker gods were definitely on my side as I was a suckout away from finishing in 8th place. Anyway, I was really impressed by your play and in particular your big stack play before the final table. Curious, did you really have JJ when you three bet me and I mucked 66 – if you even remember? Whatever the case, it was nice playing with you and good luck going forward.
Ryan
Thanks everyone.
Ryan: Thanks for the kind words. In that hand, I had J9 off. I told a little lie there. I was sick of folding and thought it might be a good spot to regain my footing.
I thought there were some odd plays at the final table, but none of them were made by you, you played solid and deserved to win as much as anyone else did. Congrats! By the way, you guys didn’t chop?
I didn’t think you were that strong, but it was a great spot to pick me off and you’re very tough to read. Jake wanted to take some money off the table and I would have if we had equal chip stacks, but since I had a 2:1 disadvantage in chips to begin with I didn’t want to limit my upside by guaranteeing another 5k or so so I decided not to chop. After I sucked out with 69s against 88, I felt like it was a free roll anyway. It was a sick run of good fortune at the final table so I feel very lucky.
Poker brat? Does that come with poker mustard and poker sauerkraut?
your continued success is really impressive!