I Busted Wil!!

Shortly after the WWdN East Coast tourney this evening, Wil set up a heads-up tournament for the bloggers, which I also played in. There were 24 entrants total.

After a quick first round matchup, I was faced with none other than Wil himself in round 2. It was a back and forth matchup, with lots of friendly banter and bluff showing. I knew something good was up when I raised with, won and showed the Hammer on the very first hand of the match. I think Wil was up around 3600-2400 at one point fairly early on, and I probably got up as high as about 4100 to 1900 a bit later before Wil made a ferocious comeback, basically by winning about 15 consecutive hands when I got Absolutely Nothing to play or even call with. After Wil drew back to even with me, we went back and forth again for a bit, and then with the chip stacks almost identical, this hand happened:



By way of explanation, Wil moved all-in on the flop in this hand, with his top two pairs having to look Very Very Juicy, in particular in light of my small bet to lead at the flop. In the end, he got set up big-time, as I had flopped and slow played a flush, which mercifully held up and I advanced to the round of 8. Unfortunately, jjok made fairly short work of me in the next round, busting me in 7th place, just out of the money positions, when my second pair top kicker fell to his top pair medium kicker. jjok made a great call on me and took most of my chips, and that was that, with me out in 7th place overall:



One other item of interest today is that I once again played in the 22:39pm $5 turbo tourney on pokerstars, and I once again cashed in the event, finishing in 85th place out of 1491 players:



I don't know specifically what it is about that format that benefits me so much, but whatever it is, I have now cashed in 8 of my last 9 large $5 turbo events on stars. And of those 8, probably 7 of them have been not just low cashes, but rather top 100 finishes. This 85th place is actually a bit on the low side for where I've been coming in just lately in the big turbo tournaments. So the payoff was only $11 and change for my fifth percentile finish, but instead of looking at it that way, instead I say (1) it is more than 100% profit on my $5 investment, and (2) at least I didn't lose my $5 investment, which I view as gone from the moment I pay the entry fee to these events, especially the larger ones where it's very hard to expect to cash in most cases.

In all, a very enjoyable night and a fairly successful one in my book, despite me losing about $14 overall. Another large turbo top 100 finish, combined with busting Wil Wheaton heads-up and ending in 7th out of 24 in the heads-up challenge match, and going out 21st out of 63 in the main WWdN....I'll take that, all things considered.