We came back from day 2 with 12 players remaining. After I drilled the "sexy 2-outer" as Brandon was telling me the day before, I had 329K when we returned. It became clear right from the start that Ryan, who was 2nd in chips at the time, was planning on avoiding people and that Brandon our chip leader was going to be the table bully. One hand I might have wanted to play differently was in the SB with AhTc. Brandon raised from the button to 25K (blinds still at 1K/5K/10K). I reraised to 70K to try and get him to stop raising my SB every time, he shipped all in on me and I was forced to fold. I understand that the fold there is not spectacular but at this stage Brandon has been the table bully, but he's also been showing down big hands when 3-bet pre, so it's not likely the AT is ahead here.
A few times I pick up AQ and 77 in the SB and BB and when Brandon raised I just shipped it for around 225K. He started getting a little aggrivated, telling all his buddies there was no way I was ever going to want to play a flop with him now (he's right, but it's because I have no chips and I'm OOP, not because he's been beating up on me). When we make it to the official FT of 10 players, I was 6th in chips with 248K and the blings just about to increase to 1.5K/6K/12K. The grind began from there. My only pots were pretty much just shoving hands with another raiser in the pot to try and chip up. I just found so few hands and so few spots to make any kind of moves that it was nearly impossible to get any big traction. It wasn't until we were 4 handed that I got involved in any really big pots.
During this stretch of waiting around for hands I noticed and older woman on the rail behind me. She was there pretty much from the start of the FT. I found out later that she had played in the event yesterday and was just trying to learn how to play by watching the FT. She started asking me some basic questions, she knew terms like M and talked about floating so she had at least read some books on the subject. By the time play had reached 5 handed, she was the only person in the audience that was actually rooting for me to TID. I felt very much like Ivey with the Humphry's on the rail watching him play. Yeah it's kinda lame, but I still think that was really nice of her to start cheering me on and stick around to watch.
The guy that came in 4th, Paul, opened for about 50K with the blinds at 2K/10K/20K. I looked down at Kc9c and make a somewhat suspect shove. Paul calls with JJ and I flop top two to end his day in 4th place and give me about 700K in chips. A few hands later came the turning point of the match. I am in the SB with 8h8s and Brandon makes it 50K to go. I raise to 130K and he decides to call. The flop comes down:
7s7c6c
Pretty solid flop for me so I bet out 155K and Brandon ships it in on me (he had about 2mil to start the hand). I go into the tank for a few minutes. I figured he hasn't really tried to play too many pots like this with hands like 99+ so I don't think he has my pair beat by an overpair. It came down in my head to do I think he has a 7. I decided he didn't so I made the call and he showed Ac3c for a good old fashioned sweat. The board bricked off and I raked in the 1.5mil chips. That hand right there changed the entire MTT.
I has the CL for most of the rest of the MTT. I lost it for a bit when Ryan hit a 6-outer to really put a hurt on Brandon's chipstack and give himself a slight CL. He didn't keep it long though as Brandon was calling down bluffs with K-high, I was hitting hands on him, and eventually he bled down to 300K or so. Blinds at 3K/15K/30K I opened from the SB to 80K with Jc7s and Ryan shipped all in for 253K more. My thought process was that he's shoving here any pair, most any ace, most Kx, SCs down to 65, and unsuited down to T9. His range is just so wide here and to add to it if I call and win, I'll have a 1 million chip lead HU playing for $66K and I lock up and extra $15K in prize money. If I lose I still have 1.6million in chips and am still the CL 3-handed so I opted to make the call. Ryan showed A9o and was unhappy to see my call, particularly when the board came
7h7c7d
and ended matters with little sweat for me. Ryan took the $20K for third and I started the HU battle.
Brandon right away came up to me and said he thought he was the better player (I agreed on that one) and he wanted the trophy. So he asked to chop the money evenly and he gets the win. I said there was no way I was doing that when I have you covered by 1million. We played HU for about 45 minutes or so and he cut the gap to 2.1 v 1.7 million when I opted to take his deal. Yeah I gave away the CL and trophy for an extra $15K locked up but to be honest, I don't think there was really much of an edge for me once the stacks get even. He was such a tough player that it wasn't work risking the extra cash on trying to go for the win. I was pretty pissed at myself initially, and it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but it's hard to complain after winning $50K.
Cmuparty1 asked in the last blog's comments where I go from here with the money. To be honest I'm still not really sure. My tennative plan for now is to leave my FTP BR alone at about $2.7K and just start mixing in the $26 buy in events, I put another $700 onto UB to bump my BR up to the $50NL level and start playing those games, and take $5K out of my winnings to use as my regular live poker BR. The rest of the money will sit in some form of investments, either savings account or mutual funds, until I need it to pay off bills and whatnot. I think the harder part of being a pro is locking up the money for those 6 months of bills, so that's where most of this money is going to go. I don't really see much else changing, or even me buying anything really cool like a nice TV or something (no where to put it being the main reason). Now that the luster has worn off somewhat, I can get back to playing my regular rotations and finish up at WPI. My career is now ready to begin, and I look forward to grinding my way to the top.