It was an interesting experience at the old Mohegan Sun today. First, the tournament directors underestimated the turnout, which meant that us suckers who bought in with cash in the 24 hours leading up to the event were exceedingly more likely to end up playing against each other, rather than any of the hundreds of internet qualifiers. On my immediate left at my first table were, in order, David Williams, Gavin Smith, and Shaun Deeb. The overall field was soft, but you wouldn’t know it if you drew the poker room instead of the tournament room.
Ironically, I did fine in the poker room (getting my 30k up to 39k), only to eventually go broke in the tournament room after my table got moved. There was nothing too exciting. I got up to 50k after I snapped off a bluff. Then I lost a bunch of chips where I semibluffed the whole way, missed, and got called, which took me back down to 40k. I lost a hand where I value bet the river and got called (love when that happens) to knock me down to 20k. I rallied to move back to 30k, then blinded down to 25k, and then lost a small pot to go to 20k. Finally I got 3500 in preflop with QQ, and the rest went in on the J94 flop. My opponent had J9s and I was gone.
It was frustrating that, despite the soft field, I got to play against very few bad players. The idea wasn’t to invest five thousand dollars to play against mostly talented professionals. Oh well, these kinds of things happen in this business.
My next brick-and-mortar event is the Spring Poker Open at Borgata.
