Double Trouble

Pokerstars have a "2x" promotion on at the moment. I haven't studied all the details but it seems everything is twice as big. I think there are double FPP points for example.

Also, all the gurantee tournaments have double the guarantee right now - so the Sunday Million was the Sunday 2-Million.

I gave that a go last night along with the Sunday Hundred Grand (200k yesterday) and the $11 rebuy - those two are on at roughly the same time.

These tournaments indeed attracted huge fields - the Hundred Grand maxed out at 25,000 runners and the "million" had a record 14,000+.

I actually got off to a cracking start in the big one - up to about 18k chips early on (flopping a straight with T8 on a J97 flop was a big help!) and then advanced to about 24k before taking a couple of knocks (bluffing on the river - must be careful with that) before taking a genuine bad beat - Aces in the big blind. The Small Blind raised to 3,200 (400/800 blinds with a 50ante). I just called as we were already heads-up.

He pushed all-in immediately on the T64-board which had 2 diamonds. Of course I insta-called and he showed pocket 9s. Unfortunately, diamonds on the turn and river completed his back-door flush and I was down to 2,500.

I managed to bring this back up to 12k within 3 hands - shoving with AJ and being called by A2 and then with KQ, called by QJ (??) and in due course moved on to 30k before eventually succumbing after about 3 hours play in 3,309th place. Actually not too bad out of 14,181 but I probably should have done better - the field was pretty soft I think.

Similarly in the others I made some progress but fell short (1,961/4,500 in the rebuy and 4,609/25,000 in the "hundred"). Actually I could easily have made the money in that one because it paid 3,581 places and players were falling at the rate of 3 or 4 per second. Still, there is little point finishing in the lower ranks of the money. On the other hand, the final table prizes were very significant indeed.

The Million was still running this morning when we returned from dropping Matt off at his friend's house - he is flying to Slovakia for a 10day holiday.

Harry & I watched the last throes of it - the winner was due to bank $297k. Not bad for 12hours of work. Actually, a deal was done 3-handed but it still was about $250k - 1,000x return.

Next poker for me will probably be a live version of the forum poker league - scheduled for Sunday 27th July and then I will try to make it to the club for the Wednesday tournament next week (23rd).

I'm also going to look at the tournament calendars to see if I can make one of the GPT or GUKPT events - in lieu of cashing at the WSOP I would like to finally go deep in one of these multi-day games.

Meawhile, I will probably play the $25 rebuy on gutshot from time to time - finished 38th (bubble+1) and 25th (in the money) at the last 2 attempts. This remains a very soft tournament.