Lost Wages

Filed Under: Poker

After getting the kids to bed on Tuesday night I found myself in a tournament kind of mood. I decided to make it Guarantee night so I signed up for the 20K on Full Tilt, 12.5K at UltimateBet, $11 Rebuy at PokerStars, and the 40K at Party Poker. Right of the bat things were going my way. I was in a zone and collecting chips early in each event.

When things went bad, they seemed to go bad all at once. I took my 4,200 chips at Full Tilt and went into the first break with only my starting stack. My 4,500 at UltimateBet turned into slightly less than a starting stack. The 5,900 chips at Party turned into busting out before the first break. The 6,200 chips at PokerStars became, well, 6,200. PokerStars was going ok.

The blinds left me without many options at Full Tilt and UltimateBet so it was time to try and make some moves. At Full Tilt that led to busting out, but at UltimateBet I managed to start collecting chips. By the second break I was firmly within the top ten. Within the second hour of PokerStars I kept pace and maintained about twice the average chip stack.

The road to the third break brought some changes in both tourneys. I went very card dead at PokerStars but my stack allowed me to ride it out. At UltimateBet I had become the table captain so I focused my efforts into accumulating chips. This was working nicely and I was trading places with the chip leader for a while before entering the break in second place.

I had a rather unique table in the PokerStars tourney. I wasn't moved once and neither were most of the other players. The aggression was up a little bit during the rebuy period but it was never in the normal maniac mode you usually see. Instead I saw players who were paying attention and were really able to play the game. With about 15 minutes left until break I still wasn't seeing any decent cards. All the folding I was doing had brought my stack down to an average size. Knowing the players I was facing were paying attention I decided to start trying to make some steals. Every time I raised, I'd get popped back. Never by the same person and I always felt that the opponents actually had a hand. I never felt anyone was making a move on me so my chips continued to dwindle until I had to play for all of them. With everyone at the table having rather large stacks I got several callers and I was out before the third break.

With only one tournament left and with complete focus I continued to increase my stack. The chip leader kept doing the same and at exactly 12:30 a.m. two event occurred. We dropped to the final twenty, and my cable went out. At first I thought it was a delay because we had dropped to two tables, but a glance at the cable modem told me differently. I did the usual hard reset and nothing happened. Grabbing my cell phone I called the cable company and was informed that they were doing maintenance and had to move some cabling for the city. I asked when I'd be back online and all he could tell me was at some point before 6 a.m.. I was fuming. I was about to pack it in when I remembered that this is the exact reason that I pay $10 a month for my Juno account. I quickly ran a long phone cord to the outlet and...no dial tone. Damn, the phone was out too. Twenty players were left, I was second in chips with 64,000, and I was going to be blinded out. This really started to irritate me when again I remembered an additional communication backup. My cell phone. I had used it as a modem once about two years ago but had long since uninstalled the drivers.

I had never really had a use for googles desktop searching tool but I have had it installed for a long time. Now I was glad that I had. I did a search for "LG" and within seconds I found the install information in a long forgotten folder. At 1:02 a.m. I was back on and at the final table. My stack was now decimated at a mere 19,700. The blinds were 2,000/4,000 with a 400 ante and I didn't have much time left. I explained the situation to my table mates and they were all sympathetic but not enough to dump chips to me.

In the big blind I found AKs and doubled up against K8. Then in the small blind I push when the button raises. He calls and my A8 is up against A7. A seven on the river sends me out and instead of fighting for the $3,000 first prize I'm left with $504 and seventh place.

Man I hate my cable company right now.