Party Poker 1 Million Guaranteed

Remember at the end of Rounders when Matt Damon is mentally pondering whether the one million dollar prize at the WSOP has his name on it? What? You haven't seen the movie? Ok I can wait...

Ok well that's sort of how I feel at the beginning of this Party Poker tournament except, well, the first place prize is a bit over $200,000 and I'm not Matt Damon and I didn't just play a marathon game of poker with my life on the line and... Ok nevermind!

Since I haven't blogged for Low Limit Holdem in a while I thought this would be a great opportunity to do it, even though this isn't low limit ($600+40 buy in no limit tournament), but it is poker and you can be right with me when I win it or fail to do so.

At this moment registration is about to close and so far there are 2150 registrants for the tournament with a prize pool of $1,290,000.00. Getting to the final table at this game would be more than a little impressive even for the top professionals. Many of the players today won their seat by playing smaller satellite games at Party Poker with buy-ins as low as $7+1. For my seat I just bought in, because one major tournament is enough stress without burning myself out on a satellite or super-satellite (TYVM!). Will I make it to the money? It all depends on whether I can survive the early tournament rounds and build my stack. If I can hit the middle rounds with an average stack (or better) I like my chances of getting to a paying seat. As far as getting number 1. That's my goal... That's my goal.

Ok registration is over. The final pre-game stats: Total Players 2164, Total Prize Pool $1,298,400.00, First Prize pays $272,664.00 and Second pays $137,630.40. Number of seats paid are 220.

With about one minute before the tournament starts I launch media player and start through my 4 and 5 star mp3's. First up "Wind", the theme from some of the earlier Naruto episodes.

Let's shuffle up and deal.

First hand utg it's my good friend K4o. All IN! No wait that's for later. Fold, someone grabs the tiny blinds and it's on to my big blind right at the start. The first hand took about seven weeks as many of the players were not at their keyboards. BB 57o, SB 72o. Good. Let's get those cards out of the way early. Fourth hand, first player after a minimum pre-flop raise 3 players see a flop of Qs2dJs. Player 1 bets $150 (! big blind is $15), Player 2 Raises another $150 and Player 3 goes all in. This is one reason why I like to play especially tight in the beginning because people are c-razy especially with this many players. For the record the all in player won the pot right there and we'll never know if he really had QQ or just A2 of spades.

For myself the next several hands are crap after crap. It's all good.

Now for the action. I call a minimum raise in the BB with T8o and the flop comes 7J2 with two suits. I check and one player bets $100 into the pot and I call with a $1450 stack. Turn is the 9 of hearts making my straight, I check, player bets $150 into me and I call. River is a blank I check and player checks. Nothing special and played timidly by myself, but I would rather give players a chance to bluff into me than throw my chips into a made and slowplayed flush, at least in the early tournament.

Very next hand, flop is JJ3 with 4 people seeing the flop including myself with pocket 8's. One aggressive player bets a little more than the pot and all fold around to me. I call. Turn is a 7 which further rainbows the flop. Player checks to me and I bet $225 (about half the pot) and they call. River is a 6 and they bet $500 into me and I call. They have ATo, no pair.

I've doubled my stack now to $3000.

Two hands later I have QQ in late position. It's be minimum raised (why do they even bother) and called before me and I re-raise pot. One player calls and we see a flop of T23 rainbow. Player checks to me and I bet 600 and they call. Turn is a rag and they bet their last $880 into me and show JJ. No 2 out miracle on the river leaves me up to $4500 after less than 20 hands of play.

I go down a bit on when a raise-reraise-all in preflop scenario pits my AKo vs their AA (Ace on the flop also! Glad they didn't have more chips!) putting me down to about $3700 but then back to $4200 two hands later when my 8d9d hits top pair and a flop checkraise and a pot bet on the (non threatening) turn pushes an aggressive player out of the pot.