We started the Dreamteam II live final with 11,600 in chips per player, which put us in 6th place. The event was held at the Poker Bunker in Canary Wharf and most people seemed to be staying at the Marriot nearby which made for a boozy and late Friday night (Ok, Saturday morning). Kick-off was scheduled for 2pm on Saturday, so in true poker tournament fashion the cards were in the air exactly on time....at 3pm.
I got off to a nice early start when I called an UTG raise from the BB with the mightly 78 sooted. Flop came 742 so I checked with the intention of pushing any continuation bet (I had the other guy covered by around 5k). Sure enough he bet out and I pushed, really putting him on AK. Sadly he called with AA - oooops. An 8 on the river however enabled me to suck out and be on my way. A little later I re-raised pre-flop with KK and got one caller. The flop came AKQ and the original raiser bet into me. I pushed and he called so quickly that his chips were in the middle before mine were! He then proudly flipped over...QQ! Not much he could do there and if the hands were the other way round he would have had all my chips. I was now up to 34k.
After that I could relax for a while with not too much happening. I stole some blinds, lost an AK vs QQ for 10k but otherwise was nicely above average by the first break.
At this stage all four of our team were still in. Shane had made a nice comeback from an early setback where Hartwith (from Ladbrokes) had called his large river bet with bottom pair (he had 63!). Shane seemed a bit miffed by this but when I spoke with Hartwith about it he gave a very good and cogent line of reasoning as to why he felt his hand was good so fair play to him! Steve (almosati) was also running nicely but poor old Daz was down to about 3 big blinds.
After the break I went completely card dead for around an hour, and drifted down to 15k. Daz managed to double up a couple of times and so was right back in it. Shane was the first casualty in 34th place, with Daz then going in 29th. The blinds were now getting very large, and it became all-in or fold poker. By the time it got down to the last 3 tables I was very short stacked (blinds 1500/3000, I had 12k) but then got a good run going. Firstly my TT held up to give me some breathing room. Then I shoved with mightly A6 on the cut-off only for the sb to wake up with KK. A flop containing two sixes soon put matters right. Around this time alsomati went out in 22nd place.
Now, the hand I went out on - did I blow it?
Blinds 3k/6k, I had 75k on the button (an above average stack). UTG raises to 18k and I have AsQs.
After the hand had played out I remembered a section in Harrington's book talking about short stack play and making sure that if you manage to get from a short stack back to a playable stack quickly readjusting out of the "I must shove any decent hand" mentality. I wonder if I should have been more prudent?
Anyway, enough "what if" I shoved and he called with KK. No miracle this time and I was out in 19th place. The team ended up in 5th spot - one better than out starting position but 4 places below where we wanted to be!
