Roll Out The Barrels
I spent the morning getting four teeth drilled out and replaced with temporary fakes.
Then I drove to Milwaukee and arrived at Potawatomi Casino just in time to late reg the $400 Mini Main. Pew pew pew and 3 bullets dusted in about 20 minutes.
I hopped over to the $400 PLO tournament. My table was a bunch of olds talking WNBA politics and poker cliches. My face hurt. Pew pew pew and I died a merciful death AAxx < KKxx.
I started off this series running bad while sober and achey. I do not recommend this.
I was splitting an AirBnB with my poker friends Wes Canon and Justin "Torpedo" Thurlow. This was a change of pace for me.
Normally I would return to my room alone to lick my wounds. Instead I stayed up complaining about my experience to Wes and Torpedo. We talked poker theory and traded stories about the Minnesota poker scene. Torpedo drank beers but I did not.
The next morning I gargled salt water and took some ibuprofen. My gums were still tender and occasionally bleeding. I do not recommend this.
But you can still play poker with fake teeth and an achey face. So I headed back to Poto for another crack at the Mini Main.
Early on I was running bad again. In one hand I flopped a set but ended up folding the river when straights and flushes completed. But I was able to double back to starting stack and then play that single bullet all the way through the end of registration.
Towards the end of the night I played a wild one that shot me up the chip counts:
This was a pretty out of line play from me. But I think in order to win poker tournaments you need to pick some spots to get out of line occasionally. Ideally against a weak player with a heap of chips. You never know, they might give up on the river and fold to a tiny river jam!
I came into day 2 of the Mini Main as one of chip leaders and a few levels in I caught fire.
First I got in AA vs KK to double into the chip lead.
Then immediately after that I got in AK multiway and I scooped to take a massive chip lead!
I was able to ride that big stack to the final table.
But early on at the final table it all went up in flames when I 4b jammed QQ into the only stack that covered me and lost a huge flip vs AKs to bow out in 8th for $6,631.
Objectively 8th place is a good result in a tournament with 883 entries. Subjectively 8th place is a gut punch. Especially when you at some point held a massive chip lead.
The Main Event was already running but I needed a moment to feel sorry for myself. So I went to the rock and roll bar in the casino and ordered a pizza and a tall glass of Spotted Cow beer.
I've had a great year in poker but it felt like I had lost all the big flips late in tournaments recently. This was just one more. I was feeling down. So I decided to get drunk and go blast off in the Main Event. I do not recommend this.
I bought into the $1110 Main Event on Level 11 and pretty early on I made a novice mistake:
After late registration closed I 3b jammed A7o from the SB into Aaron Johnson's AJ button open and spiked a 7 to KO him too.
I was missing hands to buy bottles of Spotted Cow from the bar and use the restroom. Yet the poker gods refused to punish me for my bad behavior.
On the bubble I was very active and chipping up. But right before we bagged I got caught bluffing a spot where I wanted to give up river but my drunk ass got induced to bluff by an impatient check from a player trapping top boat. So instead of bagging one of the top stacks I bagged about average. It felt lucky anyway.
The next morning Wes drove me back to my car and the casino where we were holding a side bet draft. Basically we take turns drafting players and then based on how they do in the Main Event we pay each other side bets. I love these but usually Josh Reichard wins. This time Josh drafted me and I drafted Josh.
That evening I returned to the casino for a $250 side event. I couldn't get anything going early and wasn't having much fun. It's hard to get amped up for a $250 daily when you're used to playing higher stakes.
So I went back to the bar. Maybe I would be out soon anyway before I could get too drunk to drive. Jeff Petronack and I were hanging around drinking Spotted Cows while we waited to get seated during the max late reg break.
Unfortunately I do not remember much of this tournament as I was pounding Spotted Cows the whole time and not taking notes. I do not recommend this.
I wrote down exactly one hand from this tournament and it was a final table spot where I 3b jammed a small pair from the SB. Seems good.
What I do remember is that nobody ever knocked me out so I stuck around and drank a lot of Spotted Cows.
We ICM chopped it 3 ways but I got the biggest payout and my first MSPT Gold Card!
After the tournament I was stumbling around the casino floor looking for the Uber pickup when I ran into the Reichard crew who were all hanging out after bagging the Main Event. So I ordered a couple more beers and shot the shit at the bar for a bit before once again leaving my car at the casino and Ubering back to the AirBnB.
On Saturday I did not do a whole lot besides go for a long walk around Wauwatosa. At the end of the night Torpedo and I walked over to a bar near our AirBnB and we ended the night drinking beers and trading poker stories.
Torpedo is more into the Minnesota private game scene than me. His stories reinforced my idea that I want to make it in poker by playing tournaments.
The cash game world seems so predatory to me. The games are built around losing players. Recently one of the Hustler Casino Live regulars was accused of organizing private games where she bought action from a bunch of pros who were going to play against a rich businessman. That sounds like every private cash game to me.
In tournament poker there are very few winning players. But the winning players don't have to recruit the losing players and convince them to buy into the tournaments.
I understand I'm probably a hypocrite because I can't make money in poker unless most people are losing. Tournaments just make it more impersonal. It's kind of like eating a burger rather than having to kill the cow yourself.
Day 2 of the Main Event I got off to a decent start and then I immediately bluffed it all off with a pair of 2s:
This left me with the proverbial single chip and a chair.
There's a term in poker sun run that people use to describe a very lucky run of cards. I don't honestly know where that term originated. In honor of all the Spotted Cow I drank in Milwaukee I would rather attribute my subsequent good fortune to some god of liquor and frivolity. Let's call it my beer run.
First a short stack jammed and I called off my 2.5bb with pocket 2s. Another guy rejammed and I found myself up against two bigger pocket pairs. But a 2 came on the flop and I won.
A short time later I jammed JT for 9bb in late position only to get called by AJ in the blinds. I flopped a ten and doubled.
On the next level I played a blind vs blind hand where I got all in with 52 on a 543 flop and doubled vs a pair of 4s.
Later in that level facing a raise and a jam I called off for less with AK and scooped. This put me back above average chips and in position to battle.
I definitely made a few mistakes. I paid off MN legend Robby Wazwaz in a couple of big spots. I also think I took a bad line against Wes and won the minimum in a hand that he discussed on the Suited Kings podcast.
But for the most part I had my A game and made many good decisions. On the final table bubble I found a dream spot and got full value:
One of my poker goals for this year was to final table an MSPT Main Event. I first accomplished that in this same casino in February. Now I was back at another MSPT final table in Potawatomi:
I had the chip lead to start the final table but I made a mistake early on that put a big dent in my stack:
I'm happy with how I played the rest of the final table. Once we got down to 3-handed I was card dead though and eventually got it in bad against Robby to bow out in 3rd place for $118,057.
I wasn't able to win my first MSPT Championship but it was my 3rd six figure score of 2026. It felt pretty damn good to be back in the win column. And also back in the MSPT PoY race:
After I got my check from the casino I went back up to the poker room to sweat Robby heads up but he had already wrapped it up! What a beast.
I had an appointment the next day with a dental lab to get designs for my permanent fake teeth. So after the tournament I immediately started driving back to Minneapolis.
I made it about an hour and decided I was too tired and got a hotel room in Madison instead.
But that meant that when I drove home in the morning the gas stations were selling beer again so I could pick up some Spotted Cow to bring back with me! This I do recommend :)
Cheers!
Comments