GreedyGecko – Unexpected Tournament Superstar – Almost

So at about 10:15pm last night, I ventured my way into my office in order to multi-table some limit tables until I got tired (hour, maybe two MAX). Upon logging into PartyPoker, I was unexpectedly taken to my seat at a tournament that had begun at 9pm. My adventure for the rest of the night, and onto the wee hours of the morning, was about to begin.

Earlier in the week I received an email notification that I had been pre-registered for a $5,000 prize pool freeroll. Now I’ve never been big on freerolls, given that you have to invest a significant amount of time in order to reap minimal rewards. However, this one virtually fell into my lap. Well by last night, I had forgotten of the freeroll and really had no intention of playing it.

Upon logging in at 10:15pm, I was taken to my seat where I had 715 chips with 50/100 blinds. Apparently, hundreds (if not a thousand) of the 2800+ registered entrants had no bothered to show up, and the active players preyed on the dwindling chip stacks like vultures. There were two active players at my table, taking turns raising hands and stealing the blinds from the absentee players.

For fun, I started playing seriously, and quickly eliminated greedy and ineffective active players one after the other. Within an hour, my chip stack was over 70K (first place at the time). I was then moved to a table with 5 active players who were taking turns (and openly chatting about it) stealing the inactive players’ blinds. In order to avoid any later accusations of collusion, and to flex my muscle as chip leader, I announced that I would not participate and would be playing poker to win. I was charged as being overly pious, and don’t think I was very popular. However, those players were not around for too much longer anyway.

Fast forward to the final table…I’m in 6th place, and eyeing the first place prize of $1050, no other place will do. I clawed, fought, and occasionally outdrew my way into the final two, where I would be dealt a horrific beat by the incredibly stupid.

I had just knocked out the third-place player, and now had a slim margin on my remaining opponent, but for all intensive purposes we were even in chips. This opponent had been the big stack at the final table for most of the way, and had been playing extremely aggressive (I would say stupid) risking large amounts of chips with marginal or non-existent hands. This was our first heads-up hand, and the following transpired:

NL Texas Hold'em Trny:17559106 Level:23 Blinds (20000/40000) - Sunday, November 20, 03:10:26 EDT 2005
Table $5000 Pokerlistings.com Freeroll(518025) Table #1 (Real Money)
Seat 3 is the button
Total number of players : 2
Seat 2: greedygecko ( $1437337 )
Seat 3: aceshi203 ( $1419663 )
Trny:17559106 Level:23
Blinds (20000/40000)
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to greedygecko [ 9d Qd ]
aceshi203 raises [60000].
greedygecko calls [40000].
** Dealing Flop ** [ 9c, 3s, 2d ]
greedygecko checks.
aceshi203 is all-In.
greedygecko calls [1339663].
** Dealing Turn ** [ Jd ]
** Dealing River ** [ Kc ]
greedygecko shows [ 9d, Qd ] a pair of nines.
aceshi203 shows [ Qc, Jh ] a pair of jacks.
aceshi203 wins 2839326 chips from the main pot with a pair of jacks.

So there are 120k chips in the pot, and this genius moves all-in for over 1.3M with a two-overcard bluff. By no means am I accustomed to playing my top-pair strong-kicker hands this recklessly, but against this particular opponent, this was a no-brainer call. He outdrew me to 3 outs, and put an end to my 3am, 5-hour tournament extravaganza. I was all-in in the blinds next hand, and the tournament was over. I took home $530 for my troubles, and my opponent received $1050. I don’t like bad-beat stories, but I was robbed.

I hope aceshi203 encounters some misfortune, and has to use the money to cover associated expenses. If you have any doubts as to how I feel about these situations, read this post:

Poker Tilt and Bad Beats – Wishing Pain, Suffering and Death on Your Opponents

I’m going to take a nap now…

The Greedy Gecko