For winning the heads up championship at FARGO a few months ago, I earned one genuine Greg Raymer-autographed fossil. It arrived in the mail a few days ago. This fossil is far too large to use as a card protector, and also would sort of blow my cover at the 5/10 tables. I’ve been using it as a napkin holder on my dining room table.
Today I had the fossil by my side while I waded through the Sunday deep stack tourney on Stars. I have to say that I usually am not a superstitious person, but I had an amazing run of cards in this tournament. Could it have been the power of the fossil??
Long story short (and I do mean long: 11 hours!), I got down to heads up with a player whose screen name rhymed with mine (what are the odds of that in a 1065-person tourney?). The best characteristic of this player was not his screen name but his propensity to fold way too much heads up. I was able to steal many pots preflop and on the flop, and after flopping a set on an ace-high flop i had a four to one chip lead. My opponent decided to try to bluff-raise all in with 92 when I had AK, and he turned a deuce to even out the stacks again. I wondered how long this match could go on!
I recovered most of my lead when the following hand came up:
Seat 3: Hero (3230440 in chips)
Seat 7: pacerookie (2094560 in chips)
Hero: posts the ante 2000
pacerookie: posts the ante 2000
pacerookie: posts small blind 20000
hotcookie42: posts big blind 40000
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Hero[5s 3c]
pacerookie: calls 20000
Hero: checks
*** FLOP *** [2d 3h 5d]
Hero: bets 40000
pacerookie: calls 40000
*** TURN *** [2d 3h 5d] [5h]
Hero: checks
pacerookie: bets 120000
Hero: calls 120000
*** RIVER *** [2d 3h 5d 5h] [4s]
Hero: bets 300000
pacerookie: raises 700000 to 1000000
Hero: raises 2028440 to 3028440 and is all-in
pacerookie: calls 892560 and is all-in
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Hero: shows [5s 3c] (a full house, Fives full of Threes)
pacerookie: shows [6h 9h] (a straight, Deuce to Six)
What a wonderful river card. After 11 hours, I took down my first big multi-table tournament win and netted $2650. Not a bad return on $11! Many people think it’s crazy to play a tourney that takes so long to finish, but these deep stack things have the best structure on the Internet, and it’s worth the time to get experience playing a real poker tournament instead of an all-in fest.
While I can’t prove that the fossil helped me at all during this or any other tournament, I can say for certain that the support and discussions I’ve had with players like Chris and Matt, as well as ActionBob and others, have helped my game immensely, especially during this past year. If they were not willing to take the time to generously share strategy and analysis, my game would not be where it is today. Thanks, guys!
6 replies on “I’m not superstitious, but…”
You’re welcome. Congratulations on a job well done!
Wow, I really need to play one of these deep stack tournaments some time. I wish they had more big money ones on better days, just an $11 tournament isn’t a big return on time spent.
Ryan: couldn’t agree more. They have a 30+3 during the week, but only the 10+1 on Sundays, which seems backwards to me. For this structure, I would play a $50 (whereas my typical spending limit for a tourney is around $30). I may write to Mr. Lee Jones and mention it to him. You should too! If they get enough demand for it, Stars is likely to respond.
I’ve been wondering why they don’t have even bigger buy-in deep stacks, like a $200. It can’t be because they don’t think it would attract players.
Congratulations on your win!
So much for hiding your screen name hotcookie…..congrats!
The screen name thing was only a matter of time. Rest assured I’ll be changing it as soon as I get a new computer, not because I particularly care about people knowing who I am, but because it’s just a really dumb name. It came out of a short-lived and ill-timed inside joke, and first chance I get I’m going to replace it with something more appropriate.
Any ideas out there? Any of my faithful readers have a suggestion for a new screen name? Come on now, get creative…. 🙂