Boom - phenomenal. Keep running well…the in the money period is long after the initial rush of bust outs after the bubble but you’ve got a great stack to accumulate and win some flips and races

PART 2, DAY 4 - 6/24



The big business on the agenda today is the Millionaire Maker restart @ 11 am. I wake up around 7:45 in the morning. This is earlier than ideal, but not a disaster. I've gotten enough sleep to feel refreshed and recharged. I go online and check my table draw for day two. I recognize two names: a tough reg who I've played with at Venetian in the past and another guy who won the WSOP Main Event once upon a time. Yes, I'll be in the company of WSOP royalty. The other names are new to me and I choose not to research them.

By this point in my poker "career" I've played numerous day twos after bagging chips, but the vast majority of those have bagged ITM, when you've already locked up at least a min-cash. My only other experience with bagging prior to cashing was last year's Monster Stack, where I nursed a nub to a min-cash. I'll be slightly deeper to start day two of the Milly Maker and even though a min-cash wouldn't be a life-changing moment for me, there's still a lingering anxiety: Will I be one of the unlucky 30% of survivors who bag, but crash out before the $$$? There's a creeping sense of dread.

Luckily the day starts smoothly. I win the first four pots I open. I'm not making monsters, but I'm facing no resistance. If I have KJ and raise, the flop will come ATx and the caller will fold to my c-bet. After making the big 88 fold at Wynn on my last trip, another fun spot comes up with 88. At 2k/4k blinds, Aggro Pro in the BTN opens to 8k. I look down at 88 in the SB. We're way ahead of his range and we cover his ~50k stack easily, so I make it 22k. To my surprise, a second short stack in the BB rips for about 45k. Aggro Pro folds and it's back on us. We don't love this situation, but it's a snap-call with 88 getting this price. Luckily we're up against overcards and not the overpair. We fade against AhKh and eliminate the BB. If you want to make runs in tournaments, you need to be good at winning flips. Practice makes perfect.

The bubble approaches after the first break, in level 14. By now I've run my stack up to about 200k, so I'm feeling no pressure whatsoever. We've faded this morning's sense of dread. I know that barring an absolutely insane cooler or punt, I'm at least going to cash this thing. The bubble comes and goes without any notable drama. Everybody claps for 5 seconds and the tournament continues. My table is broken shortly thereafter and I get a welcoming gift at my new table when a player with AQ 4-bet jams over my AA 3-bet. I hold to eliminate him, rising up near 300k before an absolutely insane situation comes up. It's such a painful spot that I don't even want to rehash it right now, but the basic gist is that I make a PokerNews-worthy procedural error that results in a negative swing of about 100-150k chips that would've been mine.

I can't believe what has just happened, but the best thing I can try to do is just forget that it ever happened. I still have a great stack with about 200k, so I just keep chopping away. I win a few pots to get up to 250k. Table roulette strikes once again and I'm moved from Horseshoe Blue to a new table in Horseshoe Red, where our friend from Saturday, Fun LAG, greets us. I hadn't seen him since getting table-swapped late on Saturday, but he's still here, and also healthy.

I spend the next several hours at this table, playing mostly ABC with the occasional swerve to capitalize on my choir boy image. The dinner break arrives. A dinner break on day two? That's a new WSOP milestone for me. I wolf down a burrito at Chipotle in PH and rush back to the Horseshoe. I'm hoping to have AA and KK for dessert, but instead I hit my first extended run of cold cards in this tournament. The $1.5k NL 2-7 starts tomorrow, and the hands I'm getting would be great in that. 5-2, 7-5, 5-3, etc. I keep looking for good spots to make moves, but past a certain point I'm handcuffed by the deck and my shrinking stack.

Prior to me being officially card-dead, a crazy spot comes up at 5k/10k blind level. I'm in LP with TT. Active Player UTG opens to 20k. Fun LAG UTG+2 flats the 20k. I'm planning to rip my 180k stack with TT...until Aggro Euro UTG+3 makes it 80k to go. Now I'm in a weird bind. TT is a great hand, but not necessarily a great hand to 4-bet rip with no fold equity. This is a tricky spot. Raises from the UTG seat often indicate strength, but Fun LAG's flat may invite squeezes from aggressive opponents attacking the dead money. Aggro Euro is indeed an aggressive opponent, but not an insane one. His range here is probably all the monsters and a thin slice of semi-bluffs like A5s. Considering that UTG and UTG+3 are uncapped here and that there's a slim chance Fun LAG flatted to trap with a monster, I think this is just too messy to 4-bet jam TT. I make a reluctant fold. Well, wouldn't you know it, UTG and UTG+3 get all the chips in with...wait for it...88 and 99. Literally the dream spot for our TT, and we miss the triple up.

If we're being results-oriented, this is a huge mistake. If we consider the spot against the generic ranges, I'm not so sure. I think 99 may be the one and only value hand in Aggro Euro's range that we happen to dominate. He plays JJ/QQ/KK/AA the same, as well as the big broadways like AK/AQ. So I don't know. A GTO Wizard can tell me whether we need to go with TT here, but I think folding is going to be right a lot of the time. This was not one of those times, and I missed a huge windfall of precious chips.

The blinds go up to 8k-16k in level 20, just two hours shy of bagging for day three. For the first time today, I drop below 10BB. It folds around to me in the SB. A funny side note here is that there have already been two occasions earlier in the tournament where it's folded to me in the SB and I've folded rags against this same BB player rather than trying to steal, only for him to show a strong hand. He had QQ and Ah5h those times. I guess I didn't take the hint because this time I decide that Jd7d is good enough. I rip for my last 9BB. He makes a quick call and shows a hand that I didn't want to see: QJo. We don't even have two live cards. I turn a diamond draw, but brick all my river outs.

"Payout, table 500."

After a brief wait, I'm ushered over to the payout station and given a paper slip worth more than $5k.

It's objectively a great outcome, but still feels bittersweet in the moment.

Before I depart the Horseshoe, I do what any obsessive self-doubting poker player would do. I search up a push-fold chart to see if my J7s jam was correct. The chart says it's 100% a jam from the SB on 9BB, which helps me feel slightly better. It was a cooler, dammit! They gave me KK vs. AA! Oh well.

I made a nice run today and gave myself a chance to go deeper, but ultimately it was not my turn to make a million.

Any multi-day cash is a huge accomplishment, nice job!

Nice run! What was the procedural error? Great job shrugging that off and playing for a number of additional hours.

Congrats on yet another fine run