Teamwork

MasterJ and I played together in the $1100 Aus teams NLHE event yesterday. Partners switched off every level (I think they were half hour levels) and then every orbit at the final table. I've never played an event like this. It was a lot of fun, although it required a lot of trust. TheMaster was testing my patience at certain points as I kept building our short stack and then he siphoned it off. TheMaster approaches tournament poker differently than I do, and sometimes it costs him chips. But the wildness that leads to chip spewing also leads to some huge rushes when players refuse to believe he has a hand.

We hung in there for so long clawing away with a short stack. We had no hands for so long. I kept telling the Master that the cards would come eventually if we just found a way to survive. He made a bad play but sucked out vs JJ Liu to double us up and then I hit a huge rush of starting hands and suddenly we were way above average. Master then siphoned us back down in his round but my rush continued and I built us back up. Master took over and I went to watch Paul for a bit. When I came back to check on us he was sitting behind stacks and stacks of chips. He had finally hit some hands and no one at his table felt like folding to him. We were now the clear chip leader with 18 left. We didn't accumulate anything before the final table, but still hit the final ten with a moderate lead.

We got hosed at the final table. We lost AK vs TT to get things going, then Master made a great call with A8 against KJ but lost and then we folded for a couple rounds except for one raise that got reraised. With 7 left Master got it all in with 76 vs A4 on a J63 flop for the biggest pot of the tournament and a sickening ace hit the turn. First place was 46k Aus chopped between partners along with two very badass trophies. We got 2900 Aus each.

Wasn't meant to be this time. But I learned a lot playing with MasterJ, and I think I rediscovered the great short-stack patience that hallmarked my WSOP and Bellagio multi-cash runs.
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Paul is playing the best poker of his life and fought off a punchless run of cards and unfortunate beats on day three (including losing A9o to Hachem's A9o) with some timely bluffs. He heads into day four (14 players left playing down to 7) a bit low on the pole but has plenty of time with this great structure. His play yesterday reminded me of Jeff Madsen in the shorthanded WSOP event. In that tournament I kept looking over and Madsen always had some sort of horrifying Lindgren/Hollingol chip-laden combination to his left. I never saw him in a hand, but every time I looked he had the same chips or more.
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A special note of consolation to Shaniac, who was right on the doorstep before it was all snatched away so cruelly by the Gobboboy.