It’s been a busy few weeks as the Joe Hachem Deep Stack Series consumed a lot of my time, while another related project took up the rest of it.  We wrote daily reports and covered several events live for PokerNetwork, while I manage to also play a few events myself.

I thought it was going to be another disappointing series as I looked to try and secure my first cash result in a live major.  I was deep in the opening event before having pocket kings cracked by ace-queen within sight of the money.  I also played solid in the limit event, despite being short the whole way before losing QJ vs QT all in pre, within one table of the money.  I busted early in my next NLHE event, before tackling the PokerPro event.  It was the first event where I amassed some chips and was confortable the whole way through.  Unfortunately I suffered from some techincal problems that the machines were having which caused me to lose my blinds at a crucial stage of the tournament.  Down to the last 11 players and playing five-handed I ran my AT into AK in a blind battle, was crippled and eliminated soon after, just three spots from the cash.

I played another NLHE event and busted early before going deep in the 6-Max.  This tournament, despite being the largest buy-in for me for the series, was the most enjoyable and comfortable to play.  I was able to accumulate chips early and was in control of my table which had a couple of solid pros on it.  I just have a better feel for where I’m at during a hand when playing six-handed that the full ring boredom.  Unfortunately I made one costly mistake in this event.  I was drawn into a pot from the small blind in a limped pot with Q9 and saw a KQ3 flop.  An early position limper fired a small bet which I decided to call with my middle pair.  I then turned a 9 to make two pair.  I guess I overplayed by hand by check-raising my opponent all-in, however my main mistake was that I misread the size of his stack.  I thought he had three grey $1,000 denomination chips behind, but the one at the bottom was actually a yellow $5,000 chip.  The greys and yellows are very hard to distinguish across the table.  Of course I should’ve asked for a count.  Anyway my opponent called with KQ and I took a big dent.  I tried to fight back, but Sam Youssef got moved to the table and proceeded to open every pot like a madman.  I finally made a stand with A8 but ran into AJ and was eliminated in around 40th place.

0/6 in the JHDSS, with only the Main Event to come…was it even worth the bother?

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