Vindication!

Yeah, that's what Mike "The Mouth" Matusow yelped recently at the WPT Aruba final table, so I figured it'd be a cool thing to say myself, lol. Anyways, my Saturday of woe at Full Tilt was followed by a Sunday of success. My friend Dave & I decided to play their $20 + $2 no-limit tourney in the morning, and I ended up lasting for quite a while. I never had a huge stack- maybe it got to $12,000-$13,000 at some point- but I was never in danger of being knocked out.

I was at about $8,000 when I got to the final table...only problem was that with only 71 entries, they were only paying the top 8. I just needed to hang on until 1 of the 3 shorter stacks got knocked out. And with blinds at only $400-$800, I didn't have worry about being blinded out.

Finally, the player to my right was eliminated...thanks to yours truly. He went all-in under-the-gun, and I had a big decision to make with my A-K of spades: do I come over the top and go all-in myself (hoping that everyone else folds), or do I pass in case a bigger stack has a monster hand or calls and outflops me? I decided to push, and the rest of the table folded. Short stack flipped over A-Q of diamonds, and the board hit neither of us....OK, I'm in the money!

Now it was a matter of how far up the prize list I could make it, but I was still $10,000 or more behind the top 3 stacks. I decided to play tight and wait for others to get the boot. Sure enough, the monster stack to my right went from leader to out the door in 2 hands...now I'm guaranteed no worse than 7th.

Here's where the vindication parts comes in. A couple hands later, the new chip leader min-raised under-the-gun; 2 others called and I decided to go along for the ride in the BB with Q-3. Yeah, it's a terrible starting hand, but I was getting more than 7-to-1 odds on my $800 call ($5,600 + antes already in the pot). The flop was Q-x-x so I went all-in for about $3,000 more and hoped nobody else had a Queen. The original raiser then went all-in...whoops! Everyone else folded and she showed A-Q...but the river brought a 3! I got railed by the rest of the table for my foolish call of the raise, I guess they had never heard of pot odds before...too bad for them.

Shortly after that controversial hand, I raised from early position with J-J, only to have the new chip leader go all-in. She had showed big hands every time she went all-in and was called, so why risk getting knocked out when the shortest stack was down to under $500 and the blinds coming his way? I decided to lay it down, but typed "J-J" in the chat box before folding. More Jim K bashing ensued- "he calls with Q-3 but folds J-J, haha!"- which was fine with me...if they couldn't see that these were good plays, then it made me think that I had an edge over them. Next hand the short stack was taken out, so my decision to fold paid off.

Eventually we're down to 4, and I was by far the short stack with only $7,000 left. With blinds up to $500-$1,000, I pushed with A-8 (the same hand Dave got knocked out with early in the tourney), only to be called by the big stack's A-Q. Board doesn't hit me and I was out, but with a little more pep-in-my-step (credit Mike Sexton) than I had yesterday.