Last Two Prelims Before the Main Event

I made a rare decision to skip online tournaments last Sunday to play the $3k Triple Chance tournament for a couple of reasons.

First, I feel that I've played very well throughout most of the WSOP with a few deep runs, and have little to show for it marked cards.

Second, the $3k NL is the tournament in which I've had my closest run to a final table (even though I consider my 118th place finish in the 2007 Main Event my best WSOP finish), finishing 13th place last year when John Phan won his first bracelet.
This tournament was structured the same way as the PLO tournament I described in an earlier blog this Series. Basically, you get 3k starting chips and two "bullets" that represent your "free rebuys." If you don't use them by the end of the third level, you get them as add-ons anyway.

Unlike the PLO tournament, however, I decided to take all of my rebuys as soon as I sat down. The nature of the game is very different, plus I have a lot more experience in NL than PLO.

I had a pretty tough starting table, and ended up semi-coolering Theo Tran with As-Ac vs Ah-Kc on a king-high flop. I got up to 15k from 9k there, but ended up going busto in a 32k pot to Chris Bell later on with As-Kc against his Ks-Kh easy cards tricks.

Event 54 - $1,500 No Limit

Well, here's a short and sad story. There was a middle-aged guy proudly rocking his FullTilt Iron Man Freeroll t-shirt and a WSOP hat who picked up A-A against my K-K in the second level after I had been chipping up nicely at a very soft table.

In many ways, this was a pretty brutal ending to my preliminary events at the Series. I have big plans for the main event though, and have been having a blast with my time off. I feel great going into Day 1d of the Main Event tomorrow!