DOUBLE SHOOTOUT

$160 entry - must win table of nine, to play final table of nine, comprised of all winners. First place goes to Vegas to play the WSOP ($10,000) with $1000 spending cash. Second place thru eighth gets his $160 back.

I won the first table, and avoided the ignominy of being the first guy knocked off the final table, so I'm playing for free with a chance to secure my seat at the WSOP in July. I hang in there, and when it is down to five, we all have roughly the same amount of chips. Then I wake up with AA and take it all the way to river against a QJ who hit his jack on the flop. I ultimately get him all in and bust him out, giving me a nice chip lead.

I maintain the lead, as the cards dry up and I fold everything for a good long while. Another player announces that he already has his seat secured and is willing to deal. He very nearly takes out the third guy, who goes down to $230 and is forced all in the next hand with his J9 going against my KK. I hit the king on the flop, giving me the slam dunk, unless he gets the miracle ten for a straight, which of course comes on the turn. I can still win with any spade or a pairing of the board. No such luck - he doubles up to $460 just as the break arrives.

Deal-making guy contacts PokerStars support to get them to manually pause the tourney so we can negotiate a deal. Even though the life support guy is being offered cash, he would rather shuffle up and deal, so we play on so that we can eliminate this fool. He proceeds to get extremely lucky time and again, mostly against me, and suddenly I am in third place. I finally eliminated the pesky guy when my J7 connected with a TJJ flop. He bet and I took him all in. He called with his Q high flush draw, and for once, failed to get lucky. Now we were heads up and virutally even in chips.

We paused to negotiate a deal, but we weren't so much negotiating as listening to the other guy's terms. He wanted me to pay him $6500 to take a dive, which would give me the $10,000 seat and $1000 cash. In essense, he wants $5500 to lay down. I figure I am playing for free with a 50/50 shot at winning the seat for myself, so I nix the deal. I would have paid maybe up to three grand outright for the sure thing, but $5500 seemed a bit steep.

We played on, agreeing that first place gets the seat and second place can have the $1000. I was playing very well, and a nice lead, when disaster struck. I had JJ and he raised preflop to $600. I made it $1600 and he thought awhile before calling. I got the world's worst flop, which contained an ace and a king. I decided to turn a negative into a positive, and I went all in, putting him to the test, since I was already representing a big hand. I figured even if he has a king or ace, he will need to love his kicker to put his tournament life at stake. He instantly called and showed KT. I have no idea how he made that call unless he could see through my cards. I suppose he figured he was behind but it was worth the risk since he already had a piece of the flop. I don't know how he could have put me on an underpair, unless he just saw right through that all-in ruse.

Now, he had a good lead, but I clawed back a little before going all in with AQd and finding him with AK. That was the last hand. There's not much I could do about that one, but I do wish I could go back and fold those jacks. So, I made $1000, but I'm still grumbling since it feels like a loss.