WSOP $5kNLH and $2.5k venetian

The $5k was a pretty tough tournament, I got put in some really tough spots early and my table gradually became more difficult as the day progressed. During the first 4 hours the following players were moved to my table : Andy Bloch, Jonathan Little, Men the master, Humberto Brenes and a hyper aggressive Scandinavian player I had played in a previous event. In this event my 10k starting stack peaked at around 15k when the blinds hit the 150/300-25 mark. I make my standard open to 800 in late position with JJ and Men the master moves in for 5k total from the SB giving me the classic line 'all you can eat baby'. Its a routine call for me as I crush his range but he has woke up with QQ and I'm down to 10k. I am a mere spectator for the rest of this level and the majority of the 200/400-50 level until my exit hand occurs. Hyper aggressive scandie opens from the Hi-jack and the button flat calls, I squeeze 20 BB's with A9s from the SB but run into QQ again, no suck out for me left me still in search of my first dinner break of Vegas 2008.

A day off and then to the venetian for the $2500 event which had $20k starting stacks and a 1hr clock, :-) I was up n down a fair amount quite early busting chad 'lilholdem' batista with KK vs JJ to reach 30k pretty early but then slumped back down to 15k after raising K6hh and flopping Kxx two hearts versus AK and I bricked. Over the next few hours my stack dwindled down towards the danger zone. I got a timely double up when i raised KQ from the button and the BB defended and then check raised all in with middle pair on Kxx board, :-). After that I started building my stack without needing to showdown hands which is how i prefer to do things. The next big confrontation is where I get lucky with QQ vs KK for around half my stack but a pretty big pot in relation to the blinds and finish the day with about 220k blinds resuming at 3000/6000 - 1000.

I started off pretty badly on day 2 spewing off some chips and having 100k when the bubble burst and blinds about to go to 4000/8000 - 1k. We were down to 2 tables pretty quickly and I found a timely double once again with AQ vs AJ just before the killer blind level of 6k/12k - 2k started. Before I knew it they were drawing seats for the final and I had 20 BB's and realistic shot at the $190k first prize. Unfortunately that wasn't to be though as I lost a 500k pot race almost straight away after re-shoving 88 on a LP raiser and he called with AK, QQ4K2 board sealed my fate to a 9th place finish and a $12k score. Not too bad but I am of course left wondering what could have been.

Have a few more tournaments to update on and will get round to it over the next few days, chow for now,

Pab