Chris Halverson’s Blog

WOW! What a turnout. 133 people signed up to play in the WBPT V event at Poker Stars on Thursday night. After semi-watching Survivor while talking some trash in the Yahoo chat room I was seated at Table 3.

My table started out two people short, but within 5-10 minutes it was full. The lineup at that point was:

Seat 1: Nolan11
Seat 2: Squaptor
Seat 3: Editguy
Seat 4: Me
Seat 5: Tactix
Seat 6: Monk37
Seat 7: Waxman 13
Seat 8: Dan67
Seat 9: Thehammer72

At the time I didn’t know who anybody at the table was except Hammer. Please leave a comment if you were at my table sometime during the night and tell me what site you have if applicable as I sure didn’t recognize anybody. I’m sorry in advance

Hand 1 has me in the big blind. Everybody folds around and I win my first hand of the night. I’m thinking this has got to be good karma and it’s setting me up for a good night.

Funny how the poker gods play with you like that.

First big hand of the night has me looking at KQs. I do a minimum raise and Hammer calls from early position. Flop is TAx. Turn shows J and I make my nut straight. The problem is that there is three to the flush on the board. Checked to me and I bet the pot. Hammer raises me and I’m obviously fearing the flush. I call anyway. River is a blank and it’s checked to me. I checked fearing the check raise when any flush can beat me. I flip over the nut straight and take the pot. The chat showed:

Dealer: Thehammer72 has a pair of Jacks
Dealer: chrisdhal has a straight, Ten to Ace
Dealer: Game #789212344: chrisdhal wins pot (675) with a straight, Ten to Ace
Thehammer72: nice hand
chrisdhal: nice raise
Thehammer72: great call

I don’t get much for a bit then get TT and raise 3x the BB (15/30). SB min raises and I call. Flop is 9 high and SB goes all in. I fold. I had him covered, but thought it was too early to risk that from an SB raiser.

Level 3 finds me, surprise, short stacked pretty badly. I haven’t been getting much and whenever I try to limp in VARoadstter is there a few seats away to pop a raise. I had fallen into “these look OK” mode after folding for a while, so I generally folded here.

At one point I have JJ and call a 200 raise (yes, I should have raised). Flop is all low cards and EP goes all in for T530. I have him covered and figured it was a steal with overcards. I was right as he flips over the Sisters. Damn.

I’m now down to, ready for this? T86. Yes, as in less than 100. I proceed to go all in 3 times in about 10 hands and win them all. My favorite quote of the night (it helped that it was revolving around me) was after this short run and I was back right around T1000:

Thehammer72: chris is going to be on sportscenter

Things are still pretty dire over in my part of the table. I’m down to around T800 and I see AQo UTG. I min raise only to see MP min raise me. I wasn’t too excited about that and even less so as LP raises again. To call I must go all in. I’m thinking high pair or maybe AK or even another AQ. I don’t put them on AA. The blinds are eating into my stack pretty quickly and I don’t think I could ask for a much better hand, so I call.

Flop comes down 22x. Since I’m all in I just have to sit and watch as MP checks and LP goes all in. MP folds and Stars flips LP’s QQ. Damn. Now I’m drawing to an ace. Unfortunately the turn brings another Q and IGHN.

I finished a miserable 109th. Unreal.

I don’t think I played too badly. There were just a couple of times where I was dominated and lost. I made a couple of decent calls, but I probably made a couple of bad laydowns. I did have a couple of dominating hands, but it was at the lower levels where I didn’t win as much. Well, that’s poker, right?

All in all it was looking pretty bleak for the bloggers. A lot of them fell soon after I did. Thankfully I wasn’t the first blogger to go (thanks BG for taking that honor). In the end there were two left standing to ensure the honor of the poker bloggers. After a heads up battle that lasted forever. we saw ToddCommish come from being fourth out of four after the break to take second to MtDewVirus. Great game guys.

To help ease my pain I watched “Without a Trace” with Mrs. H and when she went to bed I played a $5 SNG at Stars. My money streak continues there when I basically folded my way to third. Not my finest moment, but it still increases the roll a bit. I’ll take it.

Thanks much Iggy for coordinating this. It was a blast and it was great that we could sign up whenever.

BTW, in case you haven’t figured it out, Thehammer72 was Wil Wheaton. Thanks for playing with us!

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 21st, 2004 at 11:05 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.