My short vacation and a disappointing finish to the BBT

On Sunday, Mrs Recess and I headed down to Corolla, NC where my in-laws were renting a beach house for the week. Because of my work schedule, we couldn't stay all week, which is why we are now safely back in Richmond. Well, as most of you know, heading into the final BBT tournament (Don's Big Game), I was in 6th or 7th place on the BBT leaderboard with Top 5 winning cash/prizes. I also saw who was behind me and there were several solid players behind me so I knew that instead of worrying about how others do, I just needed to take this down and then the rest would take care of itself. I also have to admit that I was relatively confident heading into this tournament. Having just taken down the Mookie and this being my favorite format as a deep stack tourney, I thought I had a chance to do real well. My only concern was whether I was actually going to be able to play. The house we were at did not have an internet connection so as we were driving down, I was making note of the nearby hotels that maybe I could go and "borrow" their wireless that night.
Well, it was already a lucky start to my night. I booted up my laptop and found a wireless network in the neighborhood that I can latch on to. It wasn't the most reliable but I figured if it did cut out in the middle of the tourney, there's a hotel 10 minutes down the road that I can go and try to get connected so I felt comfortable.
As the tourney kicked off, it seemed that the players were fairly tight. I had Astin to my right, BuddyDank, a few seats to my left, and Mike_Maloney across the table from me. At that point, I was no threat to BuddyDank who by making the points in this tourney secured his second place finish to the BBT Machine that is Bayne_s. However, Astin and Mike_Maloney were both right behind me on the BBT leaderboard so I would be lying if I said that I didn't pay attention to that. I played fairly tight but with a deep stack tourney, the beginning of the tourney plays similarly to a cash game which I am very comfortable in. It helps to get good cards when I was able to send Astin to the rail when I flopped a straight against his bottom set and no improvement for him ended his solid run in the BBT series. I was on a roll when later, I flopped top set with my QQ, got it all in on the flop against Bone_Daddy84's KQ and so I have 3 times my starting stack. I could describe the hand but he does a much better job so visit his recap of this hand here.

I have to admit, I was starting to think this could be my night when Mike_Maloney pulled off what I would consider the most impressive, trickiest move I've ever seen in poker... oh, excuse me, while I mop up all the sarcasm that dripped off that sentence. :)

FullTiltPoker Game #2826271870: Blogger Big Game (19471102), Table 5 - 30/60 - No Limit Hold'em - 22:10:44 ET - 2007/07/01
Seat 1: Mike_Maloney (1,380) <--- VILLAIN
Seat 3: IslandBum1 (2,644)
Seat 5: RecessRampage (8,657)
Seat 6: leftylu (4,470)
Seat 7: maf212 (4,144)
Seat 8: BuddyDank (2,665)
Seat 9: mtnrider81 (3,040)
RecessRampage posts the small blind of 30
leftylu posts the big blind of 60
The button is in seat #3
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to RecessRampage [Ks Kc]
maf212 folds
BuddyDank folds
mtnrider81 folds
Mike_Maloney calls 60 <--- limp huh? weak hand?
IslandBum1 folds
RecessRampage raises to 300 <--- HERO raises like a MAN
leftylu folds
Mike_Maloney: jerk <--- directed to yours truly, how dare he???
Mike_Maloney has 15 seconds left to act
Mike_Maloney has requested TIME <--- oooh, digging deep into his play book!
Mike_Maloney: let's gambooooool <--- oh yeah, LET'S! I got kings, biatch! Mike_Maloney raises to 1,380, and is all in
RecessRampage calls 1,080
Mike_Maloney shows [Ac Ah] <--- what a jerk...
RecessRampage shows [Ks Kc]
RecessRampage: dammit <--- well said
*** FLOP *** [Tc 8c 2h]
*** TURN *** [Tc 8c 2h] [4c]
*** RIVER *** [Tc 8c 2h 4c] [7c]
Mike_Maloney shows a flush, Ace high
RecessRampage: jerk <--- so true...
RecessRampage shows a flush, King high
Jerk, I mean Mike_Maloney wins the pot (2,820) with a flush, Ace high
Mike_Maloney: lol

I hope you all go visit his site here and leave him nasty comments! :) (of course, I jest... I promised him that I'd post this hand so here it is, bro!)

But that was really a bump in the road because he was relatively short stacked. I still had a very healthy stack... and then my test as a tournament player came up. I went card dead. I started off hot but my cards took a turn for the worse and so I was slowly bleeding chips off but still above average and doing fairly well. The only two remaining that were involved in terms of the BBT race were Hoy and Jeciimd. So, I needed to outlast these two in order to climb up the BBT leaderboard further. Well, I'm clearly no Hoy when it comes to tourneys and I didn't know how to make something out of nothing. When my cards went dead, I really didn't know what to do. And then this hand came up which I think was kind of a make or break situation in this tournament...

FullTiltPoker Game #2827036091: Blogger Big Game (19471102), Table 5 - 150/300 Ante 25 - No Limit Hold'em - 23:26:54 ET - 2007/07/01
Seat 1: hoyazo (3,125)
Seat 2: DDionysus (6,538)
Seat 3: IslandBum1 (5,188)
Seat 4: Julius_Goat (7,357)
Seat 5: RecessRampage (8,012)
Seat 6: TripJax (5,940)
Seat 7: DonkeyPuncher74 (3,785)
Seat 8: DaBag (12,885)
Seat 9: NewinNov (6,621)
hoyazo antes 25
DDionysus antes 25
IslandBum1 antes 25
Julius_Goat antes 25
RecessRampage antes 25
TripJax antes 25
DonkeyPuncher74 antes 25
DaBag antes 25
NewinNov antes 25
DonkeyPuncher74 posts the small blind of 150
DaBag posts the big blind of 300
The button is in seat #6
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to RecessRampage [Jd Ac]
NewinNov folds
hoyazo folds
DDionysus folds
IslandBum1 folds
Julius_Goat folds
RecessRampage raises to 1,275
TripJax folds
DonkeyPuncher74 raises to 3,760, and is all in
DaBag folds
RecessRampage has 15 seconds left to act
RecessRampage has requested TIME
hoyazo: nh dp.
RecessRampage folds
Uncalled bet of 2,485 returned to DonkeyPuncher74
DonkeyPuncher74 mucks
DonkeyPuncher74 wins the pot (3,075)
The blinds are now 200/400 with an ante of 50

I know it wasn't that much more for me to call. I was really torn. But I hadn't been stealing from late position in a while so I felt that DonkeyPuncher74 had no reason to think that I was on a pure steal. Plus, if I called and my guess that he had a better hand was right, (I felt that the BEST CASE scenario was that I was on the wrong side of a coin flip) I would become relatively shortstacked. So, I decided to pick a better spot. In hindsight, I still don't know if I should have called or not. Any thoughts here would be appreciated.

Less than 20 hands later, it's amazing how good KJo looks when you go through a streak of 85o, 52o, etc. So, I jam and get called by Hoy who has AK and that's when it was over for me. Such a disappointing end to what could have been a nice little fun in the BBT series.

Personally, I loved the BBT and so to all those involved in making this happen, thank you so much. I just wish I actually paid attention and knew the prize structure (I literally did not know about the top 5 thing until like the last week of this BBT). I know there were discussions about changing the points thing. I think ROI is probably a good measure because if it's just a total $ won, it would skew the tournaments in terms of the big ones being weighted more heavily. But there would obviously have to be like minimum events played or something because you don't want someone to go on a rush early, win a few and then sit out for the rest of the season and pretty much have the top spot locked up. I don't know. Either way, I look forward to Season 2.

After that though, there was no more poker for the next few days. We hung out at the beach where Mrs Recess became Mrs Lobster... she apparently missed her entire upper legs so she's red as lobster and in a lot of pain. Aside from that though, we had a good time with the family, hanging out, enjoying each other's company, good cooking, doughnuts in the morning, ice cream in the evening... One morning, I woke up very early and so I decided to go for a walk on the beach to enjoy some alone time... Though I missed playing poker, it was nice to enjoy some peaceful time. And I leave you with this picture that I took from my camera phone. Nothing like a sunrise over the ocean... So beautiful...