On The Board In 10th

I played the bodonky last night and earned some points for the WSOP ME TOC. It was a tad unusual of a MTT for me. In the first two hours I never got a big pair, yet I held the chip lead from about 45 minutes in till about the 1:30 hour mark. This was due to some aggressive post flop play, and some nice flops here and there. Key hand was limp/calling a preflop raise with 88, and flopping a boat in position. I called a pot bet on flop, called a near pot bet on the turn, and pushed over a river bet for a couple hundred extra against an unimproved overpair. Not faulting the other guy there. I did outplay Tripjax possibly. With trip on the semi short stack while I was holding the chip lead, I limped AQ from middle position. Trip raised for near 1/2 his stack from the button. I picked this up as a move against my limp and the blinds based on his position and M value. So I took the unusual preflop Limp/Jam line with AQo. Trip was priced in and called with pretty much air, and my hand held-up.

I hovered at around 10k in chips for a long time. Whenever I would give up chips, I would find a way to get them back within an orbit or two. I actually started catching some huge hands finally with two tables left. I got QQ, AA, xx, AA in a series of four hands. I won with all three big pairs, but mostly just preflop so they didn't help too much. Normally, when I make it deep without getting cards and then hit like this late, it's my night. Not so much last night. The blinds rose up as always, and I was unable to hold the 10k chip level forever against 600/1200 and increasing blinds and antes. Eventually, down to about 4500, I open jammed K8s from the cutoff and got called by 99 in the BB. IGHN, but get my T11 refunded and valuable TOC points.

The points bubble broke at the 2 1/2 hour mark. You start the MTT with 3000 in chips and an M of 200. I see myself in the points more often than not here, and will be locking down a spot in the TOC pretty quick. 17 more spots still up for grabs though.