3 Hours 40 Minutes, 338 Players, and 265 Hands;

Plotting a course to the APPT Auckland Main Event
Eliot ‘Pezzzzzz’ James – aka ‘Carnite’

On Sunday the 5th of September, 338 players gathered together at the crack of Noon to take their shot at winning a free entry into the PokerStars.net 2010 APPT Auckland Main Event, courtesy of PokerNZ.com.

Having drearily started my session with a tournament starting at 9am I was actually out of bed and into my second cup of coffee before the first hand of the PokerNZ tournament began. Granted, I may have still been wrapped in a duvet and sitting on the couch, but at least I was in the flow, had a half a dozen tables open, and the blood was pumping.

Starting out with over 300 players and just a single place worth mentioning, even the most confident players know that they are simply going to have to get lucky to make it through a tournament like this. With players like Simon Watt, Sean ‘mathclub’ Goldsbury, and Dan Sing in the mix, this wasn’t entirely your typical donk-fest freeroll field either.

Rather than getting right into a spell of rungood I came out of the gates bleeding and just 17 minutes into the tournament I was down to less than half of my chips after getting tangled up in a Big Blind (not-so) special. One player had limped in MP and I got to see a flop for free with K4o. After a check-check on the flop I fired out a pot sized but on a turn of 5 T K K and was smooth called. An Ace peeled the river and after leading out again I got taken to value town by QJs, finding myself with 885 out of my 2000 chips left in front of me.

Half an hour later, and my stack down to less than 5 BBs, I finally made a start on getting hold of an upswing. First I managed to crack pocket fives with pocket twos and then several hands later had 9T in the BB when I found a generous player who decided to open-limp preflop, check the flop, and then finally raise on the turn with AK on a board of 7 K 9 T. For the first time in the tournament I was above the starting stack.

A lot of time in a tournament you will find yourself in a position where you just can’t make anything happen. For the next 100 hands, over the next 90 minutes, that’s where I was at. I never got above 20 BBs, occasionally getting as low as 8 or 9 BBs and having to shove hands like 86s to keep above water – I just sat back and waited for something to happen. Eventually that came in the form of a couple of coolers in quick succession, first up QQ over JJ before finding AK with my AA.

Down to the final 2 tables, and now in the top 5 players, I ran into the most significant hand of the game. One of the few players that had me covered, ‘slamamouse’, open limped for 2k in early position, bringing in the cutoff, button and the small blind – leaving me to take a free look at a flop with KJo. Seeing a flop of 5 J K the question now became how best to get all of my remaining 49k into the middle. The course decided upon was check-raising ‘slamamouse’ for 1/3 of my chips before shoving the rest in when a 5 fell on the turn. After tanking for a while, ‘slamamouse’ just couldn’t get away from KQo and I found myself taking the chiplead with a hand that I would’ve happily thrown in the muck preflop against an early position raise.

From here I went on a rampage, taking way more than my fair share of pots, knocking out several players, and reaching the final table with almost double the stack of second placed ‘Dave_the_doc’. Despite a couple of setbacks, like doubling up second place and actually losing the chiplead for a few hands (gasp!), I continued to beat up on my opponents. In the course of the Final Table, six of my eight opponents fell victim to my own hands – a rare pleasure that was helped by being lucky enough to win a few 40-60′s against the short stacks at the table.

Once we got down to 3 handed play I managed to wrestle the chip lead back from ‘Dave_the_doc’ with AQ on a Q high flop after getting him to commit too many chips to fold the turn with a dangerous combo draw. Shortly after, the last of his chips went into the middle with A2o, only to find both myself and ‘howgoodisit’ holding AQ and dividing his tiny remaining stack between us.

Having bubbled a $16 rebuy satellite to the APPT on PokerStars earlier in the week, the one place that I wasn’t able to stomach finishing was second. With ‘howgoodisit’ almost immediately bringing up the prospect of some sort of deal, I was quick to jump on the idea. Sitting out and letting the blinds pass back and forth, with what seemed like most of the 300 players still on the rail watching the negotiations, we struck a deal which saw me buying out the seat from ‘howgoodisit’. With a little over a 3-1 chip lead, I ended up giving my opponent $750 to let me take the seat, a deal which was pretty close to the actual value of his chips. Perhaps I could’ve put the screws in and bargained down my opponent a little lower, but partly because I had been planning on spending that amount on satellites at Sky City over the next week, and partly because I was so eager to avoid the possibility of second place, I was happy to lock up a deal.

With a Main Event seat secure, and coming off a nice hot streak, I’m heading up to Auckland later this week with a mindset that is already fantastically positive. Rather than heading up into uncertainty about whether I will be playing the Main Event, I find myself with the comfort of having a seat in my pocket, as well as extra time and money left to play other side events while I’m there. Hopefully this time I can pick up where I left off at the end of the satellite, rather than managing to burn half of my stack in the first 17 minutes.

For those of you who haven’t got your seat yet, make your way into the Sky City poker room and try your luck at one of the many satellites that will be played out there over the next week – starting from just $90 – and come join the field next week for what will hopefully be the biggest Auckland APPT to date and outdo the $209k first place of last year. Who knows, I might even be nice enough to chop it with you if we get heads-up.