Slow like an ultra runner

Almost 3 years ago, my friend and poker soul bro Mark Dalimore asked me why I didn't play the majors on Stars every Sunday. He suggested I play the Million every week, then amended his suggestion to, "No, the warmup, better for our time zone". He then watched as I set up a Stars account and suggested the name SlowDoke, a jibe at how slow I ran in a so-called speed session he supervised that afternoon at the track. To prove just how apt the name really was, it took me until yesterday to actually get around to heeding his advice. And I almost didn't.

After a sleepless night grinding, I tried unsuccessfully to get to sleep in the late AM of Sunday, then when that didn't work around 2 PM again. By now the house was sufficiently noisy that I was definitely drawing dead, so I got back up and signed up for the warmup and a few other tournies. Several hours later, I've navigated my way through a 5000 runner field to the final ten, the final table bubble. I'm 8/10 with just under 10 bbs, and I'm in the BB with KJ. On the other table, I see the shortie who looked like he was trying to slowly blind out of the tourney finally get it in with A9o v 88. When the flop came KT8 I thought "Great, final table!". But no: he hit a jack and then a queen for a runner runner straight and it's back to me. The other shortie looked like he was trying to slowfold to the final table too, so I figured if I tried to outwait them, I'd be hitting the final table with 2 big blinds if I was lucky. With only an additional 2k for ninth but over 150k for the win, that didn't seem optimal. Meanwhile, back on my table the button had raised, and my HUD told me he was doing this more or less every time it was passed around to him. So KJ is ahead of the range but unfortunately not ahead of his hand (AQ). The QTx flop gave me an openender and an overcard but I missed to bubble the final table. Obviously gutted to come so near but no regrets over the exit: while I'd prefer to be getting it in first with actual fold equity, that wasn't possible at a 5 handed hyper aggro table and I really couldn't afford to drop any lower to have a decent shot. I got 6K for tenth whichh would normally be a good sized score for me but obviously wasn't massive consolation with almost 160k for the win. There's no point in whinging though, and little to legitimately whinge about: I ran very well for most of the tournament and I'm confident that if I keep playing my best, I'll get the big one at some point.

I got tremendous rail support from my online poker buddies (most of whom were playing umpteen tables themselves, and one of whom was coming very close to winning his own European major, the Ongame 200k), and also a lot of IPBers, so thanks to everyone for that.

I'm off to Lisbon on Wednesday for the EMOPS. A nice big live score would go some way to relieving the disappointment of another crossbar.

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