2007 WPT Niagara North American Championship
Posted: 2007-11-12 13:08:39
By: KrazyKanuck
Well, I was hoping to carry some momentum from my 2 previous WPT tournaments in terms of my play into this years' Niagara WPT event. I had made it really deep in the Turks and Caico's Islands and made it into day 2 in Spain until I took a bad beat but in both events I felt I was playing very well. I was making good reads and good plays without getting very many stellar hands. I was hoping for a deep finish in this year's WPT Niagara as I had finished 4th in last year's event and wanted to do well on home turf again this year. It wasn't meant to be though.
When I sat down to play I was completely stoked to have a great day. I had an aggressive strategy in mind and decided to play the day with a fighting attitude. I was going to reraise my bigger hands and make stands right out of the gate with the intention of becoming table captain early. When I saw my table that only had 1 other full time professional who was sitting directly to my right, I was pleased with my table draw. Almost right out of the gate I got into some action hands with some suited connectors and some pairs. We started with a $20K stack and within 1 orbit I was up to about $22 000 in chips with a table image of someone ready to mix it up. A while later I rearised a gentleman who had brought in the pot for a three times big blind raise. If I'm not mistaken, he made it 150 to go I reraised him to 500 holding pocket Kings. The flop came down with all low cards, I believe something like 258 with 2 spades. He checked to me and I bet about 800 into the pot to which he called. The turn card brought another 8 and he checked again. This time I bet about 1500 and he raised me to about 4500 which I called. The river card was a flushing Jack and he bet 4500 again. I thought about it for a long time, tried talking to him a bit and he answered one of my questions with something along the lines that the board helped him. After some more thought I called him and to my delight he flipped over 99. I won a good pot and was sitting at about 30 000 at this point. I was feeling great, felt great about my table and my play and just then the floor man came over and broke our table. DAMNIT!
I was moved to a table that held last year's Foxwoods winner Nenad Medic along with a few other professional players. To my right was a very chipped up and aggressive amateur player who was very hard to put on a hand. It was definitely a tougher table. To make a long story short, I ran 3 sets into bigger sets and misplayed a couple of hands to find myself crippled and very short stacked after the dinner break. I managed to rebuild my 2300 stack up to about 16 000 and was starting to move in the right direction. I chased a really big drawing hand, a KQ of diamonds on a 4 T J two diamond board and missed it costing myself about 5500 in chips. I finally after about an hour was dealt AJ of clubs on the button when it was folded to me. I raised about 3 times the big blind and the big stacked big blind reraised me about 3 times my bet. I immediately pushed all in hoping he was making a play but my hopes were dashed when he insta called me with AK and ended up winning the hand when he flopped a K. That was the end of my Niagara hopes.
I wasn't overly happy with how the day went. I was very unlucky with my sets and a few other hands but was more upset at a couple of hands that I misplayed. I learned a couple of things though in that tournament about myself, my play and my attitude that I hope to carry through to my next tournament and improve on. The next big one for me will be the Bellagio 15K event. Last year I busted Hellmuth on day 1 and carried a big stack a few days into that tourney. I cashed and finished around 50th I think. I'm hoping for a better and bigger result this year. I have cashed in my last 5 for 5 Bellagio tournaments with my last one being a 16th place in the WPT's main event $25 000 buy in last spring. Hopefully this year's 15K will go well.
Knock em Dead
Jim KrazyKanuck Worth
