WPT Final: Rollercoaster Day Ending at 110,325

From 50,000 down to 23,000 and then all the way back up to 120k - I was even all in for my tournament life two times during day 1b - not exactly what I had in mind before I started.

I arrived at Bellagio almost on time along with my good buddy Erik Sagstrom aka. Erik123. Except Hevad Khan, my table was all unfamiliar faces.

To be honest I probably started out too aggressively trying to outplay my opponents. My key problem was that they had a hand most of the times I was trying to push them off a pot. My "hard core" mode meant that my stack slowly, yet consistently dwindled down to 23,000. Until this hand:

We are playing 100/200. Unknown guy opens in 1st position for 1000 and gets two callers. I am on the button holding



I am pretty sure that I have the callers beat and I can't really put the early raiser on Aces or Kings so I decide to stick my money in there and see what happens. All-in for 23,000! Is it quite an over bet but in some cases I will get called by TT or JJ just because of my loose image. The blinds fold, the initial raiser folds, the first caller folds, but the last man standing just doesn't believe me. I guess he has seen these apparent squeeze plays too many times and he ends up calling 22,000 more with

!

No Nine of the board and I am back to about 50k. Quality Play? - No comment!


Unfortunately I drop down to 26k after yet another couple of bold moves against Hevad Khan. I need a donator - and lucky for me I have just the man at my table. We are now playing 200/400/50. In a blind vs. blind confrontation I open for 1250 with



The BB calls. The flop comes:

- not a bad flop for a guy looking to double up!

I bet 2000 and my opponent quickly re-raises me 4500 more. After a brief "Hollywood dance" I move my stack to the middle - all-in for 26k total. I am certain my "dancing partner" is on a flush draw. The Donator goes into the tank, finally expressing theclassic poker cliché: "I'll gamble with you". He calls and flips over:



Amazing! I mean what was the guy hoping for? Against my hand - his absolute best case scenario - he is a 2:1 underdog but what about the dreaded Ah Th, Kh Th or Th 9h in which case he is drawing extremely slim? Anyway - the turn brings the



and I get up to leave the poker room.

River:

UPS! I re-suck hitting my 6 outer on the river and I am back where I started the day.

From then on I finally got the rocket fired up. A kamikaze player decided to attempt two huge but poorly executed bluffs against me taking my stack up to about 100k.

At the end of the day, two of poker's finest Antonio Esfandiari and Marcel Luske were moved to the table. Not that it changed anything. I brought my stack all the way up to 120k and lost a few small pots during the last half hour to bag 110,325.

I am very pleased with the result of the day even though I wasn't playing my A-game. Tomorrow morning I am off to the squash court to battle it out against Natarsha - that always gets me fired up.

Until tomorrow

Gus


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