$1,050 HORSE Recap

This tournament was great fun, even though it was a tough field. Among the 32 players that entered were two time WSOP bracelet winner Bill Chen, Pokerstars Pro Chad Brown who won the $5,200 HORSE event at last years WCOOP and has 5 WSOP top 5 finishes, "Chino23" (I've forgotten his real name) who was the only poker pro to make the final table of the WSOP main event in 2007, and "Pearl Jammer" who is one of the best online tournament pros around and (according to his bio on fulltiltpoker) has 1.6 million in career tournament winnings.

We all started with 25,000 chips and while I dropped down to 15,000 at one point early on I came right back up to 25,000.

I did have one big hand early where I kind of got screwed. We were playing stud and I started with KK in the hole and a 6 up. Both of my opponents had an ace showing and after they'd capped it on 3rd street and again on 4th street it was about 99% sure they both had AA. On 5th street I hit the third king. At this point I was 99% sure I had the best hand. Since it got capped again I figured both of my opponents had two pair. On 6th street it was two bets an on the river it got capped again. Since I didn't do any of the raising on the end I was about 95% sure I was dead, but since the pot was an insane 25,000 chips I had to call. It turns out that they did both in fact have exactly what I thought, but one made a flush and the other a full house. In order to lose on the last card I had to miss my full house, and one of them had to hit one of his two outs and the other had six outs to hit. It sucked.

But things got better quick. By the time we were down to 25 players (a few hours in) I was in first place with about 100,000 chips. I kept steady at that number until we were down to the final 8 handed table.

Then I made a bunch of hands. I kept thinking "Man, I am running so good right now!" By the time we were down to 6 players I had about 40% of all the chips in play with over 300,000. And that's about where I stayed until we were heads up!

When we got to heads up we were close to even. Then my opponent kicked my ass in the hold'em which really surprised me. I feel like that must have been his best game and when we switched to Omaha he had me about 600,000 to 200,000. But I kicked his ass in the Omaha! I totally flipped it on him and was ahead 600,000 to 200,000. Sadly he took the advantage back in the Razz and wiped me out in the Stud. I feel like I played well heads up and there wasn't anything I could have done much differently so I feel great about this result!

2nd place paid $8,640! I've got to find some more HORSE tournaments to play! I might have to explore some new websites to see if they have any good HORSE action.

Now after playing all day and writing this blog, I'm tired! I'll have the final total and some final thoughts on the 2008 WCOOP tomorrow.