Checking in from Hammond

The WSOP Circuit stop at Hammond, Indiana (not far from Chicago) winds down this week with a $10,000 "high rollers" event today. I'm definitely not a high roller, though I did stop in on Friday and Sunday and play a bit. I hadn't seen a number of industry friends in over a year and I wanted to check in and say hi, and I did that, seeing TD's Nolan and Steve and Charlie and dealers such as Rich and Thomas, all long-time poker friends, plus Donnie Peters and FerricRamsium and others. I missed Kat Liebert and a few other players but did catch Alex Outhred playing in the same $350 Sunday event I took a stab at, so that was good, too.

My poker went iffy. I won my first $130 sat on Friday night so I picked up enough lammers to play the rest of the weekend, but I had no more success. First was the 7pm Friday night tourney, with a weird structure that lets you play for fun for the first hour but guarantees you'll be microstacked by 10:00. I did and I was, and I ran sevens into nines at that point. I went downstairs and bubbled another sat (drat!), then came back late Sunday morning to play the Event #8.

Sunday's tourney had 468 players, starting with 10,000 in chips each. I made the top 200 and lasted 11 or 12 levels but never had any cards. Up until the last hand, I had only one hand higher than 6-6, and that was an under-the-gun J-J with which I took down a no-action pot. In my last hand, I had Q-Q -- under the gun again -- and was called by the player behind me and reraised by the next player, a young player new to the table who had already repopped me off a different preflop hand when I tried to steal the blinds. He gave every indication of being LAGgy.

With only about 12,000 left at this point, and me already in for 2,000 (blinds 300/600/50), calling all-in was a no-brainer. I turned up my Q-Q and he turned up A-Kx, and the ace flopped.

At least I got to watch most of the Packers-Vikings game.