Sunday, April 03, 2005

My Freeroll Story

I was hoping to post today with some great news about the WSOP freeroll that I played on Full Tilt (bonus code HHead) yesterday, but alas, all I can bring to the table is a bit of disappointment.

1400 and some-odd people were signed up, but I think that only 500-600 were actually playing. At my first table there were only 3 humans, and it took me two full levels to convince the other two players that we could make money just taking turns stealing the blinds from the people that weren’t there. Finally they understood, sort of. One guy was with it from the start, the other guy just couldn’t seem to grasp the concept that a raise would take the blinds from these folks. There were three or four times where he would call and check it down with the absent player, and three times the absent player won. Ugh. He was wasting time, and his demonstrated lack of mental acuity was getting really annoying, because I knew when we finally got some players he would not be lasting long.

Finally, the humans started trickling in. Guy on my right and I were getting along well (the dumbass from the first hour had helped build our solidarity), and just stayed out of each others way while we chopped down the giant stack who came to the table. I love giant stacks in the middle stages who assume they are invulnerable simply by virtue of said big stack.

Fast forward. There is 40-45 people left when I finally get a table change, and hip hop hooray, it’s Shelly! With blinds at 1K/2K ante 250, she was getting pretty short w/ around 14K. Hell, I wasn’t exactly rich, as I only had about 25K or so. I decided to get aggressive with an AJ, getting called by an AK, and fortunately that whore sucked a J out of the deck for me to double me up to about 50K. Sweet, I had some time now. Shelly went out on a 77 when she had to push and got nailed with a 10 10, and I was all alone again. It was sad seeing her bust, as I had visions of a blogger comeback and stampede to the finish.

After taking a couple of pots, I was still sitting with about the same 50K when we are down to 27. After being moved to my new table, I find myself UTG with JJ, and everyone at my table has at least 3x my stack, so I raise to 6x BB in the hopes of getting called by a coinflip or inferior hand, and I get raised from 12K to 24K. the back of my head is yelling “Higher PP! Abort, you giant headed monkey! I decide to go ahead and push and take my chances, on the logic that I was still a really low stack and would need to double up to have any chance at winning. Dammit, the guy had AA and I couldn’t manage a second suckout. It did make me feel a little better that the flop came all undercards, which I would have pushed on, in any case.

Not a bad performance, but I can’t help but be disappointed. I just wasted 3.5 hours and had nothing to show, not even a token payout. Then Mrs. Head pipes up: What else would you have done with that 3.5 hours?”

OK, fine. Most likely nothing, point taken. (I may have saved the world though or something, you never know…….)