A Lengthy Claw

The 3k was very similar to the 2k the other day for me. I was below average the whole time but I found one or two cracks of weakness to exploit and just hung in there. There was a very exciting moment when I hit 21k (we started with 6k) and I thought to myself, oh my god, how did I do this? How do I have an above-average stack with these cards? It really was a beautiful moment. I'm very happy with my play.

The difference between today and the 2k was today I failed to pick up JJ, QQ, KK, or AA even once in eight hours of play and I failed to suck out on AA when things got desperate. I went out with about 40 players left paying 18 after being moved to my sixth table of the day (shattering all table-change records).

Nam Le the Machine got 3rd in the 2.5k event and moved within sniffing distance of the Grinder for POY. I've only played with Nam once (at the Foxwoods main event this year) but I've always gotten the feeling that he is playing really, really hard 100% of the time. He always brings it. Every single hand, every single day, every tournament, he plays as hard as he can and obviously it's paying dividends.

I started really thinking about this when I loafed day 1 of the USPC and Party Poker disappeared. You just have to play really hard every single tournament to give yourself a chance. Maybe there's nothing you can do that particular day to save yourself from elimination. But sooner or later a tournament will come along where you have the opportunity to win it IF you play your best.

Right now I am playing my best, so I am going to give it another shot in tomorrow's 5k event. It will certainly be a tough field.