My weekend, err, day in St. Louis

Well, the tournament was a good experience. No, I didn’t win nor did I necessarily come close, which was disappointing. There were about 210 people on the invitation list for the tournament and about 160 ended up showing up in St. Louis at the tournament venue.

I came in 13th. The top 16 “cashed”. As I posted before, I had no idea of any prizes being given out for anything but first place, so I was happy being able to sneak into the money. The bubble period, as always, was pretty crazy. The blinds were huge and everyone’s stack was short, so it really came down to the cards at that point. The cards and whether or not the tournament director was watching your table. If he wasn’t, the play was ssssllllloooowwwwww to allow for others to get bounced out. At that point in the tournament, which really wasn’t a great structure, on every hand, we usually had a forced “all-in” because of the blind size, only one big stack at each table capable of making a raise at all, and the rest middle stacks (with M’s around 2!) who just wanted to stay out of the way until they were forced to play.

Obviously, the big stacks got bigger and walked into the money and the numbers of players left fell very quickly. I think we went from 30 people to 16 in about a half hour if I remember correctly.

Anyway, I was happy with the way I play overall, so I have no regrets. I basically got blinded out like most did near the end, unless they got the cards. I probably could have played a few more hands than I did throughout the day, but I got just enough good hands to allow me to build my stack steadily. I went on a nice run after the second break, which helped me make it far.

As I also posted before, the top prize was an all expenses paid trip to Vegas and a seat in the WSOP main event. It turned out that second received a buy-in into a $1500 event of their choice and third received a $1000 buy-in. The rest of the places were cash prizes and a prize package. 4th received $300 and each place went down by $50 until 9th when it stopped at $50 and that was the same for each of the rest of the top 16. Not exactly enough to cover my plane ticket but at least it was something.

I ended up breaking even on the rest of the expenses based on some winnings in the casino. I played some $3/$6 LHE for about an hour and a half and ended up about $50. My biggest score of the day was a big hand I hit on 3 Card Poker. I like to just play the “pair plus” bet and let the dealer turn over my cards. I have no decisions to make so there is no need to look at them myself. I was playing only $5 a game but I managed to hit 3 of a kind with 6’s, which pays 30-1. I also played some craps. I ended up about $150 on the gambling and that was about all it cost for food, cabs, and the room between the 2 of us.

I have actually only slept an hour until now this weekend. I woke up at 4am here yesterday to get my early flight from Boston. After the tourney, my buddy and I drank heavily, ate disgusting bad for you food very late, then gambooled some more. We decided to take off at 3am back to the hotel, but when we got there, decided to sleep for an hour, get up, and go to the airport and jump on the 7am flight back home. We had both had enough and I wanted to spend some time with my family before I leave for Munich tomorrow. I was home by noon so it worked out great overall.

I am posting a couple pictures here too. The first of them is pretty blurry because it is from my camera phone in really bad lighting. The last one is a picture of what Moneymaker signed for me in his book. He was a cool guy and walked around watching some of the tables during the tourney. He was watching my table for a few minutes. Mike Caro was also there. He did a great seminar before the tourney. He is quite a unique guy that is for sure.

Hope you had a great weekend.

Me getting my "big" award





How Moneymaker signed his book for me