I've Got My Seat

I guess it was my day today:
















At one point, I was down to 565 chips with about 27 people left. Then things started coming together. I doubled up with the only other shorty called my allin with T5s vs QQ. AK held up vs KJ AIPF to nearly double my stack. I tried playing a bit more of an aggressive game today, and it helped that I got the cards to support it.

The hand of the day for me, aside from the final hand, was doubly sweet: I vaulted to the chip lead and took out Lucko at the same time:

Full Tilt Poker Game #11771138015: Brit Blogger Game (87407341), Table 1 - 150/300 Ante 25 - No Limit Hold'em - 17:51:19 ET - 2009/04/19
Seat 2: Julkeus (2,820)
Seat 3: SmBoatDrinks (3,730)
Seat 4: mclarich (9,772)
Seat 5: twoblackaces (7,856)
Seat 6: lucko21 (7,735)
Seat 7: wwonka69 (11,862)
Seat 8: heffmike (4,225)
Julkeus antes 25
SmBoatDrinks antes 25
mclarich antes 25
twoblackaces antes 25
lucko21 antes 25
wwonka69 antes 25
heffmike antes 25
mclarich posts the small blind of 150
twoblackaces posts the big blind of 300
The button is in seat #3
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to mclarich [As Ac]
lucko21 raises to 800
wwonka69 folds
heffmike folds
Julkeus folds
SmBoatDrinks folds
mclarich calls 650
twoblackaces has 15 seconds left to act
twoblackaces folds
*** FLOP *** [2c Ks 2s]
mclarich bets 1,200
lucko21 calls 1,200
*** TURN *** [2c Ks 2s] [Jd]
mclarich bets 3,300
lucko21 raises to 5,710, and is all in
mclarich calls 2,410
lucko21 shows [Jc Kc]
mclarich shows [As Ac]
*** RIVER *** [2c Ks 2s Jd] [5h]
lucko21 shows two pair, Kings and Jacks
mclarich shows two pair, Aces and Twos
mclarich wins the pot (15,895) with two pair, Aces and Twos
lucko21 stands up

Lucky for me, the J fell on the turn and made it nearly impossible for him to get away from the hand. That gave me nearly a 5k chiplead over 2nd place Evil Wonka.

I got heads up against TBA with a 3:2 chip deficit and got all my chips in bad against him with QT vs JJ. IMO, he became more aggressive as the blinds got higher and I started playing back at him with weaker holdings, thinking he was raising with a wider range. In this case, he actually had a hand but I pulled out a Q on the river to take a 3:1 lead.

This was the first final table I've been at in a while, and my HU game was kind of rusty. Plus, being so close to a TOC seat against an accomplished MTT player like TBA made me a bit nervous. I stayed patient and tried to hold on to my advantage as a bigger stack, even folding 22 to one of his shoves because I wanted to find a better spot to get my chips in. I didn't think I would have been able to compete as well if we got to even stacks again.

The last hand was a total setup - we both had trip Queens by the river, but my KQ narrowly beat his QJ, and miraculously, I get to join the handful of lucky donks to play for a WSOP seat.

GG to everyone, especially TBA, who came back from being the shortstack with 5 remaining to one card away from taking it down. It was just my day to be the luckiest donk I guess.