Last Caesars tourney of the trip

Played for about five hours and played fine. Didn’t get involved much early. My first table was on the outskirts and I knew it would break. I listened to my Shuffle and had a massage for all of level 2. On my second table I ran an interesting squeeze play. Scandi player in earlier position raised to 1800 at 300/600 level when I was in the SB. The button announced raise and then realized there was a raise already, so he put in 1800. Someone called him on announcing raise so the ruling was the minimum, to 3000. I looked down at KJ. Compared to what I had been getting, it looked like aces, plus I figured it was live. With so much dead money I decided to move in for about 9500. The initial raiser folded and once he did there wasn’t much the accidental raiser could do. The ten seat was smiling like it was obvious what I was doing and I showed the hand. Even when it’s obvious it’s hard to call-off for them in that situation.

At 400/800 with 75 ante the accidental raiser made it 2275 which was all his chips except for his chocolate (5k). I looked down at queens and felt sick, I just knew it wasn’t going to end well. I was up in my seat and agonizing – incredibly, I considered folding. I decided to raise enough to put the initial raiser all-in leaving me about 6500. Two seats later pondered and eventually moved in for 19k. The seat right after him agonized for about 30 seconds before folding and then it folded to the initial raiser who called. As sick as I felt I obviously called. I was shocked to see the initial with KJ of spades – I feared worse. The guy who had me covered had AK-off with one of my suits covered. Flop had an ace right in the door and that was that.

I wasn’t even mildly upset – I saw it coming as soon as I looked down at aces. Poker is like that. When you’re playing a lot you practically see things before they happen, like the Matrix. I was almost 53% three-way and if I win that I have over 30k chips at 400/800. No regrets.

Poker is pretty much done for this trip. Gambling store and Rio tomorrow, Fix for dinner, and Lavo after, then headed home Sunday morning.