Grand Tournament VIII at Pokerroom

This past few weeks, I managed to qualify for the $1000 + 40 Grand Tournament which was held Dec 16 - 17 in pokerroom. Now before you start thinking that I am a big roller and can afford the huge buy-in. I am glad to inform everyone that I did this thru the satellite route.

My whole investment .................. heheh ... only $ 8.80. Pokerroom has this nice 5 stage system for their big tournaments wherein they allow you to join for as low as $1.10. Stay with me here as this gets a bit complicated. So basically what I did was I joined eight $1.10 satellite 10 person SNGs. Out of these 8 SNGs, i was lucky enough to win 3. So that gave me three Stage 2 $7+ $1 SNG tickets. Out of these 3, I again managed to win 2. So now I have two Stage 3 $30+3 SNG tickets. Out of these two SNG tickets, I won one. Now I have a single Stage 4 $120 + 10 SNG ticket.

Well, waddya know, I won this last SNG and I got the granddaddy ticket. The $1000 + 40 which allowed me to play in the Grand Tournament + an additional $30 which effectively cancelled out my $8.80 investment turning this into the ultimate freeroll for me.

234 players qualified/paid the buy-in for a whopping $234,000 prize pool. Top 30 got paid. For the mathematically inclined, this converts to a peso value of 11,700,000 .00 Now you know why I totally ignored the 2nd PPT tournament which had 3,000,000 in the prize pool. Well, besides the fact that they were scamming off the players. But that's a topic for another day.

It was one of the best tournaments in terms of structure. 30 minute blinds with a 10,000 starting stack with blinds starting at 25-25. A real skill rewarding structure if I ever saw one. The players played through 12 blind levels or until 20% of the players were left. Everybody then got a well deserved break and the last 20% plays the next day for the moolah.

Woke up at an ungodly 3 AM in the morning for the start of the tournament. (I wonder when the times will become more friendly to Asian players.... wala naman ng US players ah) .

Played tight the 1st few levels. Stack was damaged a bit when I played Top Pair Top Kicker against a well disguised set. Got lucky in the middle part when I called a raise by a player with AJ against my 4-4. Flop comes J-10-4 all hearts. Bet hard on the flop, got called by villain who got the TPTK. Turn is another J. Which gave villain a set but gave me the full house and negated the flush possibility. All in on the river and I doubled up.

There were other hands that were won and lost, but that was the critical hand of the tournament for me. Gave me some confidence and allowed me some leeway. Ended up with an above average stack after 12 blind levels. 234 players were now down to 50. The 1st day ended at 10AM. 7 hours playing time and I gratefully survived and went to bed exhausted.

Woke up again at 3 AM the next day. 50 players left. Time to separate the donkeys from the players. Tight playing all througout. Blind steals and resteals were prevalent especially near the bubble. We had a guy on our table who had 11,000 something with 32 players left. Blinds were already at 2,000 - 4,000. Everybody was telling him to hang on. But for some weird reason, he goes all in with his J-10 suited. Somebody called with an AQ and that was it. Bubble boy and everybody heaves a sigh of relief. YAY. ITM baby.

Finally busted out when I raised with an 8-8. Got reraised all in by the big stack player. Thought about it for a while. Decided to call because he kept doing the reraise all in shtick to the mid stack players and he couldn't be that lucky, could he ?.

Figures, big stack had 9-9 which had me dominated. No luck on the flop, turn and river. And that was it for me.

Pretty good tournament. My first big ITM in a major MTT.

So what does this mean for my bankroll. Well ... .... very little to be honest ...... ...... I was so excited when I qualified for the grand tournament, that I promised my wife that I'd give her majority of the winnings for the family savings if I made the money. Never really thought I'd get this far. I guess it was also some sort of reverse psychology on my part to avoid thinking about the possible scenarios......

Oh well, at least, this means a lot of good loving from the wifey this holiday season. ;)