The reason for my absence from the online tables is, my aging six-year-old laptop kicked the bucket. This was about a month ago. So I pulled out an even more ancient laptop, a 10-year-old Dell that was collecting dust in my garage, and wouldn’t you know it, the machine works. One problem – the only application it can’t seem to run is PokerStars. For whatever reason, it won’t connect to the server.
It’s been a somewhat annoying turn of events, but at the same time, I’ve been busy at work and felt I needed a break from the game anyway.
But last Sunday, I felt a burning desire to play the PokerStars’ Sunday Million. Now, I’ve never played the Sunday Million before (its $215 entry fee is generally too rich for my blood), but last week’s event was different. In celebration of the tournament’s fifth anniversary, PokerStars boosted the prize pool guarantee from $1 million to $5 million, with a minimum of $1 million and a Lamborghini Gallardo (pictured right) to first place.
Now, if those sums don’t get your juices flowing, I don’t know what would. So I borrowed a buddy’s laptop and entered the event.
The final numbers associated with the tourney were mind-blowing: 59,128 entries generated an $11.8 million prize pool, with both first place ($1.6m) and second ($1.1m) earning seven-figure payouts.
In the end, the players at the final table settled on a nine-handed chop that saw payouts ranging from $263k to $844k. Regrettably, I was not at that final table, though I did make a decent run and managed to finish in the money.
I had an excellent start. After chipping up steadily over the first hour, I won a huge pot against an aggressive big-stacked player seated two to my right. He’d been raising my big blind from the button every single lap, so when I found AQ in the big blind, I re-popped his opening raise of 450 to 1100. He called, and we saw a QQ9 flop. I bet out, he raised, I reraised all in, and he called with KQ. I held up, and took nearly his entire stack. At that point, I had over 40,000 chips after starting with 10,000.
I continued to build my stack, peaking at 108,000. Along the way, I won another huge pot when my QQ held up against AJ after we got it all in on a jack-high flop.
Two bad beats crippled my chances of making a truly deep run. After moving tables, I found a very aggressive player to my left. On one occasion, it was folded around to me in the small blind, and he shipped all-in after I limped. The very next lap it was folded around to me again, and this time I raised to 3,000 (blinds 500-1,000). It definitely looked suspicious, given the action in that same spot the previous lap. He apparently felt it was a good time for a re-steal, and shipped all-in once again. I had trapped him with AK, but he sucked out with his raggedy Q3 offsuit. That chopped my stack in half.
Later on, just before the money bubble (at 7,450 players), I had 99 in the small blind and called a middle-position raise. The big blind came along for the ride, and we saw a 764 flop. I elected to bet 12,000 (about half the pot) to see where I stood, and the short-stacked big blind shipped it for about 30k. The initial raiser folded, and the pot odds were far to compelling for me to fold. My opponent showed 73o for top pair and a gutshot straight draw, which he filled when a 5 hit the turn. Gross. Losing that pot knocked me down to about 34k, and I was resigned to limping my way into the money.
Once the money bubble burst, I grinded my short stack for another 20 minutes, before shoving in late position with A6 and running into the big blind’s AK. Oh well. I finished in around 5,000th place for $354, which was a min-cash. Obviously it would have been pretty sweet to make a deep run, but I was proud to have cashed in one of the biggest tournaments in history. Good times.
Playing at all was a novelty in itself – I hadn’t played for the three weeks previous, and I haven’t played since. One of these days, I’ll get that big score. As soon as I get a laptop.
Oh, and my bankroll? $6,300 at the moment.
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