Tyron Krost: The grim reaper of tournament poker

I ended up coming 7th in the lead-in event. The structure, which was quite good on the 1st day, went into super-turbo mode for the final table.

Still, I was going quite nicely and had a good shot at one stage, but when the average stack is around 10x the big blind, you can usually only lose one hand. Or a couple, as is the case with the following gem:

I’ll just stick the whole pile in

Blinds were 1500/3000 with a 400 ante. My stack 35k, opponent covers with about 50k.

I found AA in the cut-off and decided to put in a 7.5k raise. Usually, I’ll just stick the whole pile in, but no one at the table was calling all-ins anywhere close to near enough and there was a lot of calling going on otherwise.

Everyone folded to the big blind who called. The flop was AhQh4. He checked, and because I feel like I’ve got the deck crippled now, I decided to check back and hopefully get him to bet out on the turn.

Turn was the 10s. Opponent checked and I have to bet it now. I threw out 9.5k, he took some time then called.

River was the Jc. As the river hit he jerked back and almost fell off his chair, then he pushed me all in. I whinged to myself for a bit then mucked leaving myself with around 18k. So somehow I found  a way to fold top set with around 1/2 my stack in there and only 12 big blinds to start the hand. Guess the curveballs keep the game interesting…

I lost most of my chips in this unlucky situation

After that I doubled up with K5 to Q8. Then I won a small pot with 66 against Q10 to knock out a short-stack. I took a few more pots before I lost most of my chips in this unlucky situation:

Blinds were 3000/6000 with a 500 ante. The button shoved all in for 52k, I had 57k in the SB and over-shoved with A10, he had the AK and I got no help.

That left me with 5k. I was feeling lucky though and if ever there’s a time to come back from one big blind, this was it. I won my first all in with Js10s to A10 after I made the flush, but I couldn’t complete the comeback on the next all in, going out with Jc8c to AJ.

I went straight from that event into Partypoker’s Celebrity Charity Tournament. It was great to see the amount of celebrities they got – although to be honest I only recognised Albert Costa. Still, all the Spaniards were having a blast playing with their Pep Cruz (not Penelope Cruz…sigh) and other such celebrities. Unfortunately, I went out quite early though to some nondescript bad beat.

The grim reaper of tournament poker

After that, I had the main event to look forward to. Though, that was also short lived. I more a less was involved in only a couple of hands up till level 4 when the grim reaper of tournament poker appeared and crippled me with a KK to AA deal. We got it all in on the Q66 flop and I wasn’t helped.

The good news is that one of the Partypoker qualifiers now has a greater chance of winning an extra $1m if they win the event! Seriously, how good is that promotion? There are only about 300 players and the tournament buyin is €3500.

For myself, I’ve got a few weeks to hang out on the beach now and unwind before the month of the WSOP.