Lucksacking My Way Through The RiverChasers

I have always done well in the Riverchasers events.  My squeaky tight play goes nicely against the grain versus all of those crazy river chasers.  I typically don’t play a lot of pots, and don’t get it in bad much as a result.  Sure, to win an MTT you are probably going to have to get it in bad a few times and get lucky. I just do not like to rely on luck for more than a couple of hands over an MTT.  Last night I just about luck sacked myself into a BBT4 seat in probably the craziest MTT I have ever played in.  It was a wild ride and not very typical for how MTTs go for me.  I got it in bad a bunch, got coolered a bunch, got lucky a bunch, and somehow found myself heads up for the title with the chip lead against HighOnPoker.  Here is a recap of some of the craziness.

For the first hour I was very card dead and was treading water.  Shortly after the first break, I managed to build my stack up to north of 6k when I pick up AQs near the button.  I called a preflop raise, and an AQx flop dropped.  We got it all in by the turn, and I was against AA.  I am now down to T790 in chips and in big trouble.  I shoved from (edit) the cutoff with J9o to try to get some chips to work with.  CrackinAA called with A9 I think, and I out flopped him.  I would then go on a mini run catching AA a couple times and quickly building my stack back up to 5k.  I would then catch KK and crack AA with it by flopping a set.  Around the second break, I had the chip lead, and HOP was actually still pretty short with just over 2k.  Hoyazo had a ton of chips, and I was thinking about how cool it would be to go heads up with Hoyazo for the seat.  When I have this many chips at this point I don’t get too crazy aggressive, but simply try to slowly build my stack as we head to the Final Table where anything can happen.

It took a very long time to burst the cash bubble and get to the FT.  Eventually I had to step up and knock somebody out.  I would get the final table about third in chips with pretty equal stacks overall.  HOP was starting to build an overall chip lead.  I was treading water with pretty weak hands, and had drifted down to 6^th in chips with 7 people left.  I am only playing for the win at this point, so I needed to be a bit more aggressive than usual.  The problem was I kept running into slightly better hands.  I picked up A7o in the BB and jammed when the SB bet 3x to T3600.  He would flip up AK and I would take a huge hit to my stack.  An orbit later I got A7o in the same situation and again the SB raised to T3600.  Again I jammed, and SB has TT.  A couple of 7s on the flop would keep me alive.  I like to jam this situation, because it can help you to get some walks later on, but I kept running into monsters.  I would pick up A7o again later on and get it all in against ATo and river a split pot.  The poker gods were clearly behind me.  HOP did the bulk of the work, and we got down to heads up pretty quickly from there.  I had about 17k in chips, while HOP was north of 100k.  I asked if he had won a seat and would be willing to chop.  I think he laughed at that point.  He was jamming every hand to try to end it and I folded through a few week hands before taking my stand with QJs.  HOP would flip over KK, and my night was over, right?  Not so fast!  The Poker gods dug me out again.  I caught a couple of big hands and rallied right back to the chip lead.  I asked again for a chop.  I know that chopping was pretty controversial in earlier BBT series, but it had been done.  I am only playing these things for the seat, and could care less about the cash prize.  I would have chopped for 1^st and gave Jordan 1^st+2^nd place prizes for the seat, which would have been something like a +$270 EV choice for him, since he already had a seat, but he declined.  I am perfectly cool with that.  After that it went downhill pretty quick.  I kept making hands that were good, but slightly worse than HOP’s and bled away my chips.  Those are the breaks.  I can’t really complain, because I really had no business being in this situation.  I simply luck sacked my way to bridesmaid in the riverchasers.