Survived

Survival was the operative word as I played the 2nd qualifying round of the World Blogger's Tourney this morning. I deliberately missed the 1st round since it started at 3AM and was Pot Limit Omaha. I just registered and promptly went to sleep. When I woke up in the morning, I saw that I finished 148th place out of 400 something participants. Didn't really expect to qualify. Just wanted to see how one would finish without playing a hand. Heheh...

The 2nd round was NLHE and started at 8AM with about 500+ players. This one I was definitely playing. The problem was I had to go to work at 9AM. So I devised a plan. I'll play the first hour, hope to double up, then take the 30 minute drive to the office, then continue from there.

As we all know, plans don't necessarily work out the way you would want them. Initial stack was 2,500. I got it up to around 3,200 when I got a nut flush. But this was immediately taken back down to 2,500 when I chased a draw which didn't materialize and I had to fold. And then it was time to go to the office. Traffic was the normal christmas rush and when I got to my PC, my stack was blinded down to around 2K. Not too bad.

Well, to make a long story short. I was basically playing short stacked poker the rest of the way. I was card dead and was just relying on some steals and squeezes to keep my head above water. The only decent card I got was KK somewhere in the middle of the tourney which got paid off by somebody with a lower pair. After that, it was downhill and I couldn't get a hand.

Near the bubble and I had around 5 to 6xBB. I just waited for the action to be folded to me and then I went on hail marys with crappy hands. Really no choice. I think I even went all in with 10 7 offsuit which luckily did not get called. Good thing about the blogger tourney was that the tables were pretty tight. Even the monster stacks were folding liberally and was not too aggressive.

Eventually we got down to 73. I got about 5K left and the blinds were if I'm not mistaken 750-1500. 72 was the magic number. Lo and behold. I get pocket rockets. Yep. Fucking AA. Great timing, poker gods. I already used up my time bank and was just delaying. But I was definitely folding them if the action came to me. I kept on pressing the refresh button on my status screen hoping for the bubble to break. And just like that, 2 players got eliminated and I qualified. Woohoo .... I immediately press ALL IN and my aces got called by a monster stack with 10 6 suited. He flopped 789 and that was it for me. Are we appreciating the irony here ? But I'm in the blogger finals and that's all that matters.

This 2nd round tourney was pretty much my best shot and good thing I qualified as I would have probably skipped all the remaining qualifiers except the last one which was on a Saturday. So nice result for me. Good luck to all the other Pinoy bloggers. I'll see you in the finals. =)