So I regrettably stood in line to repechage back into the Main Event.  I hated the thought of wasting more money on being a tournament donk, but the maths dictate that rebuying is a must.  $550 set on fire, and I was back on the felt, for potentially the last ever time.

My table draw was ok.  I had Andrew Scott on my table (again!) but he was two to my right where he couldn’t give me too much grief.  There was a young kid to his right, who at the first break I found out was Brendan Rubie – a talented young player who won the opening event at the APPT last year.  He was certainly in control of the table early.  I decided to make a stand and 3-bet him in position with a suited connector only to have him check-raise me on the flop.  Ok, back to plan B, avoidance.  I was down under 10k within the first two levels and LOL’ing tournament poker.

From there I just played my TAG game and worked my short stack.  I shoved with AJ on an ace-high flop and got an opponent to fold the same hand.  There was a huge donkey at the end of the table collecting all the chips and I was praying for a hand to double through him but it wasn’t to be.  Not much changed until the last few levels of the day.  Andrew “Adgee” Jeffreys got moved to my table and the dynamics changed immediately.  He shoved over the top massively with AJ and was called by AK and 66.  The 66 spiked a set for a 100k pot.  Andrew then shoved several more times, as he had no intentions of going through to Day 2 with anything less than 50k.

I was on about 14k when I found pocket jacks.  I raised, Andrew shoved, I wished him luck and called.  He had A5 and the board bricked to double me up.  Andrew busted soon after and we got down to the last hand of the day where I picked up pocket queens.  Ricky Gov opened and I shoved, trying to get another desperate gambling call.  If I had Ricky covered I think he would’ve gambled, but he would have 4k left if he lost so he folded AQ.  Not to worry, I was happy enough to bag up 32,500 chips – the highest point for my chip stack all day.  I was through to Day 2, with a below average stack, but enough to get some room to breathe on Day 2.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 21st, 2009 at 7:07 pm and is filed under Poker, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.