canterbury tournament

My friends convinced me I 'had to' play at least the main event of the fall poker classic at Canterbury. Fine. I can handle that.

I hate Canterbury. I don't hate too many things, but they seem determined to stick it in your ass and just make you know that it is in fact your privilege to play there and you are not a customer who is paying them. I hadn't been there in six months previous to this tournament and I really doubt I'll be there in the next year until the next one. That said, there are quite a few people who work there whom I like and it sucks that the only place I see them is there.

On one of the dinner breaks I was 2nd to act (utg+1) and I looked down at 92o so I stood up and started walking towards the buffet. Somebody started hollering my name. I looked back and it's the floor and he's irate that I 'folded out of turn'. Yes, i suppose very technically I did, but it's not like this was even a remotely critical spot of the tournament and surely not worth hollering at me for. I said sorry and kept walking away. Everyone does this. It's not like I'm some out of norm out of line renegade.

The tournament sheet said play was going to be until 27 players or midnight, whichever came first. From the get go that seems OK. They pay 27 ($1270 which is a huge 190 dollar profit from the buyin) and playing longer than 12 hours is kinda long. Ok. But when you have a really stupid structure and it's 9:30 and people are literally getting knocked out every 2-3 minutes it doesn't make sense to make everyone quit and come back the next day. Most people have jobs and other things they need to be doing. It sucks to have to come back and bust out and 'break even' especially if you had to drive a long way. They were going to prolong it but there were a couple 'strongly voiced' players who insisted they stick to it so they did. 80% of the players wanted to keep playing. From a direct business perspective I don't totally blame them, it made a ton of people have to come back the next day who otherwise wouldn't have and they probably spent some money. But from a rational standpoint it's totally brutal. It didn't help that after they decided we were done they collected our ID's and made us sit there idly for 25 minutes. Take our ID's, let us play until you are done with that shenanigans and then send us home. That would make more sense at least.

33 minutes into playing today we had gone from 27 to 18. After about an hour and a half we were down to 9.

I went into the final table 2nd in chips. The only player who covered me was some young kid who 'looks sorta like eminem'. He definitely looked out of his element and was right to my left. A few hands in I raised to T37000 with with AQdd T5000/10000 and T2000 ante. I had been raising smaller but this spot seemed right. I had about 400k chips and he had perhaps 700k and the avg stack was ~220k. He called and everyone else folded.

The flop came AhQsTh and I led for T60,000 and he instantly sat back in his chair like damn. Then he said "raise, one hundred twenty thousand." I immediately hated my hand. I was pretty sure I was folding. Nobody who knows me would ever call me a folder, but jeez, I'm not a bonehead either and this goofball is telling me he flopped a straight or three tens. Or he could have AT, QT, or a flushdraw right???? I went into the tank for like 30 seconds. Some asshole older guy who couldn't stop needling Blake the day before called the clock on me. Ok fine. I hadn't said a word after he raised because I didn't want to give away my hand. Well, now I had to figure out what was going on so I did my standard talking. Asking him what he had, running through different hands etc and he was just staring down at the felt. Good move by him for sure. Then I asked him if he had king jack and he looked up and looked me in the eyes. That was the decided moment in my mind. Most players fitting his description will not all of a sudden look at you if you call their hand out. They'll be like OMGOMGOMG don't make a move, he'll know you have it. Sold. I said all in and he SNAP-called. hmmm. I showed AQ and he showed KJ and byebye beeker. All that good playing and making good reads to blow one and go out to the only guy who can break me. So frustrating. There were a handful of pretty short stacks so I coulda folded and still had an above average stack and easily gotten some decent money. I've lost many 'huge' pots in cash games without blinking at all and for some reason this just hurt really bad. I was in the worst mood I've been in in years. I don't know what my problem was, but I was super crabby.

As I'm walking out of the tournament area I ran into Pickett, troy, frank and another buddy who had just came down to sweat. They didn't even get to see one hand. After cashing in my chips and getting a beer I'm sitting down kinda stewing a little bit at an open table when a dealer walks by and spills my beer everywhere including partially on me. Haha. My initial thought was oman...when it rains it poors, but given how ridiculous the timing was it actually made me in a better mood. It's like the world is testing me. Oh yeah, life is good.

So we get to the wild game and the guys want food and I have to use the restroom so I go find one. I walk down to our seats and take a seat. The boys are sitting in seats 5-7 and I sat in seat 4. There is a ~45 year old couple in seats 2 and 3 and the guy kinda snaps "you have a ticket for that seat?" I'm like what? Yeah? He says ummm actually you don't. Then I realized the boys didn't scoot all the way in. We have 5-8 and I'm in 4. It's the 2nd game of the season. Sorry, I'm off by one seat. Ok. "well if whoever has that seat comes you're going to have to move" "ok fine yeah I will don't sweat it" and I thought it was over there. I got back to the game. Then like 30 seconds later his lady friend turns to me and says really bitchily "no really, if somebody comes you're going to have to move, that's not your seat." I thought for sure she had to be joking cause it was just like mega-bitch tone so I asked her and no, was serious, wrong seat dude. Pickett turns to me and says "wow, wrong day lady." I told her that "I having the worst day ever and to please just stop pushing my buttons and leave me the fuck alone, if somebody wants to sit here I'll move." She mocks "ouhhh what are you going to do, go postal on us???" I don't think I've ever went off on somebody I didn't know or said fuck to a random person but this lady was out of this world. I mean wow. I switched seats with Pickett and ignored them the rest of the time and that was that. I climbed over like 3 rows of seats the other time I came back to avoid them and the wild scored a couple goals and I quickly forgot about all that bologna. Some people though, man.