Poker Roundup, Days 4 and 5

I played the Saturday tournament (the Main Event) which was a $500 buy-in.  There were 417 total players and 45 were paid.  I ended up finishing around 80^th.  They played down to the final three tables, then broke for the day and met again Sunday morning to finish up.  That part of the event was broadcast live on “Holdem” radio, some Internet station.

Sunday was the “last chance” tournament, which I skipped.  I decided to play the cash games instead.  It really is some of the toughest poker that I will probably see, so I wanted to put myself to the test.  I played super-tight.  It was the kind of game where one or two hands will probably define the entire session in terms of coming out ahead or behind.  Unfortunately for me, these two hands came down like this:  First, I had Aces cracked; and then I was bluffed out of a huge pot when I had two pair (and position) but the fourth diamond came on the river and my opponent pushed all-in.  After I folded, he showed me his six-high garbage hand (a good play I have to say).  So bottom line, I came out loser from that session.

One other really interesting hand was played where the dealer made a mistake that I had never seen before.  The short stack pushed all-in from middle position.  Everybody folded to the small blind, who said “call”.  He didn’t touch his chips at all, he just said “call”.  Then he turned over his hand – pocket Queens.  The short stack had pocket Jacks.

At this point, the dealer mucked both hands, washed the deck, and pushed the pot to the short-stack (the one with Jacks).  Seems the Wildhorse Casino has a house rule that any hand that gets shown is immediately declared dead.  The dealer didn’t hear the player say “call”, and the player didn’t push his chips in, so he just assumed that the guy with Queens had folded face-up.

The guy with the Queens went ballistic.  Both the guy sitting next to him and the kid on the short stack said that they had heard him say “call” – it’s just that the dealer did not.  They called the floor man over, and the result was that the pot was split between them (the short stack had not touched the chips that were pushed to him, so the pot was easy to rebuild).  So that was that.  Very odd error I think.

As I evaluate my tournament play, I really think that I did very well, at least for this point in my poker career.  I played three tournaments; cashed in one of them; and finished in the top 20% in the other two.  And in all of the tournaments I managed to outlast all of the pros, with one exception (Marsha Waggoner lasted longer than me in the Main Event).  So I guess that’s something.  You can bet that I will be back at future roundups!