Final Table Bubbling a Massive MTT Sucks

I played the riverchasers and the bodog 5k guarantee last night. I would flop a set early in the riverchasers, get it in on the flop, and lose to a flopped flush. Oh well. But, the bodog 5k was another story. I really felt like I was playing the tournament poker of my life in this thing. I may not have been, but it was one of those nights where everything you do just seems to work out. Every time you bluff they fold. Every time they play back, you have the goods. I did not really get a sick run of cards at all, but I was making all the right moves at all the right times for several hours straight, and it felt great. About 90 minutes in I smooth called a button steal from the SB with QQ. Not a move I normally make, but I guess I learned this one from love elf, as she knocked me out of the bodonkey earlier in the week with a similar play. I would check raise a Jack high flop, and call a reraise push (AJo of course) and double through to a comfortable 12k in chips. Then about 2 1/2 hours in, I would play back to back massive hands against the chip leader. On the first hand, I had AQs and raised preflop. The flop would come K high with 2 of my suit. I raised the chip leader when he led out on the flop. He just called. I missed on the turn, but went ahead and fired another bullet after the chip leader checked. He would call. The river would bring the flush, and I would make a nice sized value bet that got called. On the very next hand it would fold to the chip leader in the SB and he min-raised my BB to T1200. I picked up TT, and overbet jammed for 28k in chips. I did this for a couple reasons. I thought the chip leader might be tilting and may call a bit light. Also, I really did not want to play a semi dangerous TT hand against the chip leader at this point in the MTT when I had a comfortable chip stack. To my surprise he called with 88, and I would get to about 60k with 60 out of 491 runners left, and a nice overall chip lead.


For once I played the big stack very well for about the next hour. Pressuring the crap out of the table, and stealing chips left and right. I would still have the chip lead when we got down to 2 tables. I was really feeling it, and thought there was a great chance I was going to take it down. It may not have been in the cards (literally). I would not see another pair or decent Ace, and would watch my chip lead go away as we headed towards the final table. I finally took a massive stand against the new chip leader on the FT bubble when I jammed KQs over the chip leaders typical preflop min-raise. He would make a bad preflop call and ultimately river a 3 outer in a 67k pot to send me to the rail in 10th. My normally unflappable self freaked out a bit at this, but who wouldn't have (I actually cursed at the screen a bit). My dream run came to an end a bit too soon, but it was quite a run. I may be playing the best MTT poker of my life right now, but only time and some more results like this will tell. It sucks a bit to be feeling so good about your game, and get sent to the rail like this, but only 1 out of 491 gets the win here.


On a side note, the bodog poker software is just plain horrible. For the first hour of the MTT it was stuck showing 488/491 entries remaining. I needed to reboot the software during the break to fix that. Also, if you look at the screenshot closely, you can see that they shorted me about a buck on the payout. Not sure how they can screw that up, but they managed to. It's pretty scary when your account is not credited properly, and who knows who often they do this and it goes unnoticed. If I did not have so many tourney credits, the MTT structure was not so good, or there were not overlays in nearly every guarantee that they run, I probably would not bother with bodog. I guess you just need to take the good with the bad with them.