Ultimate Poker Challenge $1000 No Limit Hold’em

The UPC is an interesting structure – a series of $1k events where 40% of the pool from each event goes to the semi-final event and to point leaders. You earn points for making it further in each of the 2-day tournaments. I had played in 3, getting points each day, but I needed to get at least 20-30 more points to be assured of getting into the semi-finals.

I wound up coming in 2nd in the tournament. It went from 3pm to about 9pm. People had to re-schedule their dinner plans more than once :)

I was out after 7 hours of play when a benignly drunk Frank Mariani, who I am told owns half of the Lakers, raised a $1200 pot all-in from the small blind with 78o. I had AA for the first time all day and called. The board came 4-10-10-7-7 so I was out. I got a bit, but not extraordinarily, lucky beforehand, but it was still a sick hand. There were 4 tables left. 15th paid $3100 and 1st paid $99k or so.

I entered the 1500 rebuy PLO tournament which was cancelled – or at least replaced as the main event for today with a $500 rebuy NL Hold’em tournament. We had 11 players and 8 rebuys, for a $28,500 pool. I chopped for 2nd with Hassan Habib, who took first.

Brief summary: I was out about 40 minutes before the end of the 6th and final round of the day. 1270 people or so were playing Sunday and about the same played Saturday. Then on Monday, the 1200 or so people left would play together.

I was able to get up to about 30k chips by the end of the 3rd level. I only had one monster hand. I limped with AA and extracted an entire $10k stack on it, though my opponent wound up having an open-ended straight draw and a flush draw, but she didn’t hit.

(results: http://www2.pokerpages.com/tournament/result8742.htm)

This was a 2-day event with a $5000 buyin and optional $5000 re-buys the first two levels, and an optional $5000 add-on at the end of the first two hours.

This was the last large event before the 6-day “big event”. Omaha is a game like Hold’em but very different. You get 4 cards instead of 2 and have to use 2 of the 4 cards and 3 of the board cards to make a hand. I’ve been playing pot-limit Omaha (high) since the 2003 Aruba event, and mainly have been playing around the tournaments I’ve gone to at the Commerce and in Reno, and then a few multi-day sessions at the World Series this year.