Season 4 TOC Re-cap

First, let it be known the Lee won the Kill Trophy for 2008, and it wasn’t even close. During one of the later tourneys Baklava screwed up the eliminations scoring and cheated Lee of two kills and it was never fixed because it didn’t matter.

Second, congratulations to Lee and Phil. I'm going to update the blog but no one really reads it anymore so I want to mention a few things. In short, after a GPT season that was The Year of the Woman, this year was The Year of the Pinko (which, if you think about it, is not that different). Lee won two of eight events this year and ran over the TOC table. I think he literally was never lsower than starting stack - 100 or so. In his tour de force he knocked out every player except me (Phil took care of that choir).

Hank won his third Player of the Year award in four seasons but Phil had the best average finish among anyone playing more than one tournament (Sweet won his only entry in PLO and More Dave finished third in his only event). Phil came on late to cash in all of the final four events (third in razz, runner-up in 5CD/KCL and PLO, and the champion of HORSE) and finished runner up to Lee in the TOC.

Lee began his ToC triumph with 5500 chips, second behind Hank against a field of seven (Jim couldn’t make the tournament). After I predicted that Tim would be first out and Hank said someone would be out before the end of the first level, Lee took care of the dirty work. Tim had been raising a lot of hands and made a stiff re-raise after Lee called my initial (junk) raise from the blind. Lee flat called and they took a flop of all clubs. Lee let Tim bet and then raised him, and then called his AI. Lee tabled A8c for the nuts and left Tim with runner-runner outs – maybe – which he missed. As usual, Tim was gracious in defeat and a really good sport about being called with a suited ace by a player out-of-position.

And then there were six. The next person to tangle with Lee was Sweet, who got all-in holding kings against Lee’s AKo. Lee had enough chips to survive a showdown, Sweet did not. Sweet looked to be in pretty good shape – until the flop brought three diamonds. As you could guess, Lee’s ace was a diamond and he went from a worse than 2-to-1 dog 43/57 dog. Sweet held the king of diamonds but everyone at the table fully expected Lee to hit at that point, and that’s exactly what happened when at ace came on the turn. Sweet didn’t hit the case on the river and then there were five.

While still in level two Bak raised five-handed and I called with 9s7s looking to get tricky. Lee called out of the blind and checked the flop dark, which was KxQs4x. It was checked around and the turn put another spade on the board. Lee checked and Bak bet 225, I called, and Lee announced raise. Before I could even muck Bak was all-in, which made my insta-fold a nano-insta-fold. Lee’s top-two was pretty predictable at that point, but what did Bak raise to 125 with pre-flop? AKs? How about Ks4s. He flopped top and bottom and turned the second-nut flush draw, but he missed and was out. Then there were four.

This is the last hand I’m going to know anything about because it didn’t end well for me. I was around 2500 chips and called Phil’s UTG raise from the button with pocket-fives. There’s a website with that name so it has to be good. Flop was almost just what I was looking for, J65 with two hearts. Phil checked and I overbet the pot with 600. Phil immediately announced raise, and I had a sick feeling. I wasn’t at all sure I was winning with bottom set then. I said “you better check my stack before you say how much” and just to be sick he bet 1200 when I held 1800 chips. Then I felt really sick. Given how low the blinds were 1800 chips was enough to do battle with, but there was a huge stack at the table and I would be short-stack by a wide margin, and for fuck’s sake I did have a set. Ultimately what got me was the two hearts – I couldn’t shake the notion that he could have a big flush draw like AK or AQ which is actually beating a flopped pair of jacks as the cards lie. I made a crying-all-in which he of course called and he had exactly what it felt like – top set of jacks. There’s only one person in the GPT who hits one-outers and it ain’t me, so then there were three.

I watched some of the three way but my mind was mostly on getting over-setted to go out of the last ToC ever and how I could have gotten away from that hand. Lee and Phil were confident that there would be a liberal on the wall. Either way, with me bubbling Hank is now the only person to cash in all four ToCs, winning two, finishing runner-up to me in year one, and third this year. Heads-up did not take long with Lee’s chip stack.

I almost disabled comments for this post but I did wait several days to write a summary which means I may have messed some things up, so flame away.

Oh, one more thing – I am going to e-mail updates from the WSOP that will get posted directly to this blog. I am playing in Event 40, 2-7 TDL which thankfully has no re-buys this year. I haven’t decided whether to play stud/8 because there are so many deep stack hold’em tournaments going on while I’m there. Last year I took my stakes for things I planned to play. This year, after the Sunday’s tourney I’m just putting my bankroll wherever it leads me with no plan other than Caesar’s mega-stack NLHE on Tuesday.

I’ll see you at heads-up, bitches.