$5000 Shootout

It took me a while to finally motivate myself to write something and even now I really don't feel like writing much. My shootout table was full of no-names and it only took a couple hours for Phil Tom (father to Scott Tom, the founder of Absolute Poker) to eliminate 8 of the players on his own and begin heads up plays vs me. He started with a 4:1 chip advantage and throughout the whole 3.5 hours of heads up play I was never able to build up my stack to over 30k in chips.

Because I was so shortstacked I was forced to limp most of my buttons in order to not invest too much money with raises and cont-bets. This worked pretty well against him because he played relatively ABC, check-folding most flops when he missed and rarely getting out of line. Unfortunately I ran like cancer during most of heads up play and he continued to run like Jesus.

With blinds of 400/800 and a 14k stack I limped the button with 6s8s, planning to make a move if he raised as he had raised the last 3-4 times I limped the button. He did indeed make it 2400 and I shoved all-in, which he instacalled with 66. Just to be sure, the case 6 came out on the flop and I was toast.

As fate would have it, he went on to win the tournament and is now a proud owner of a WSOP bracelet and an additional $477,000. Well done, sir. Maybe he can take some of that prize money and pay back some of the millions that his son stole from innocent Absolute Poker players.