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Last night was the championship poker tourney at Oaklawn that I qualified for last month and I could not be happier with how I played. The key hand happened fairly early on, at my first table, when I made a nearly impossible laydown that kept me from going broke. I had pocket kings and made a standard pre-flop raise and got two callers--a short stack who was playing pretty conservatively, and an Ernest Hemingway lookalike who had already amassed a ton of chips and seemed to be playing a little strangely but getting very lucky. The flop was queen high rainbow, and I was out of position. I led out with an amount just big enough that I figured the shortie would raise all-in if he had hit anything, and that's exactly what he did. I knew I had him beat. Knew it. He either had something like pocket tens or jacks, or a pair of queens with a decent kicker. So he shoved, just like I hoped. Then Hemingway flat called. Hmm. I didn't see this coming, and I smelled a rat. I could not for the life of me figure out what he had here, but it just didn't feel right. I knew that an all-in over the top by me would get a call, and I really didn't want that. Add in the chance of the short stack also having a shot to draw out on me, and suddenly I didn't like my chances. So I mucked it.

The short stack had made queens, just like I thought, so I had him crushed. But Hemingway had flat called with Ace-Jack. He had a gutshot, a backdoor flush draw, and one over card, and he called a huge flop bet. Really?!? The turn was an ace, he rivered his flush, and had I stuck around I definitely would have been out of the tournament. It was a very unconventional fold, but it was early enough that I knew I could find a better spot to put my tournament life on the line. It turns out I would end up seeing Hemingway again at the final table.

I could never really get anything going. I was just clawing to keep my stack viable, stealing the blinds here and there. It was a really soft field, but the combination of my cards and my stack just didn't give me too many chances to get super creative. I got pocket aces in late position once, and after several limpers I popped it up to five times the big blind, just hoping to thin the field a little. From the looks I got you would have thought I stood up and took a dump on the table. Everyone folded. It was a very friendly kind of crowd, and everyone just wanted to see flops.

I think I was 9th out of nine in chips at the final table at one point, with Hemingway and another player that I knew from my qualifying round each holding almost ten times as many chips as me. Thus, I was ecstatic when the talk about making a deal happened when we were seven handed. The talk seemed legit enough that I folded a king-queen that I normally would have pushed with...which became painful when the hand would have made me quad kings. Finally, six handed, the deal was agreed on, throwing some cash to places 4-6 instead of just the top three. I kept playing solidly, chipping up with all-ins a couple of times before getting knocked out with pocket eights against a big stack's ace-jack, which made two pair. I was thrilled with how I played, honestly. I've gotten so much better the last few years and it felt great to see so many reads turn out right, and to recognize plays that I made that worked that I would not have had the skill or experience to pull off even a couple of years ago. It would have been nice if my eights held up, because then I would have been a real threat to get to the top three and probably heads up, but hey, that's poker. It was a fun tourney, I made some cash, and it felt good to play well.

The List - #119 completed

119. Visit the Oaklawn poker room.

This wasn't a hugely noteworthy list item, but I put it on there because they recently updated their poker room and it would be my first time trying out the PokerPro electronic tables. Oaklawn is a horse racing track with gaming, located an hour away in Hot Springs. Last week I left in the afternoon and went to check it out and I was pleasantly surprised with everything.

First off, I was trepidatious about the quality of the place to start with. This was based on nothing, really, just the overall idea that a casino located at a track in remote Arkansas had the potential to be pretty janky. It really wasn't. I didn't spend much time on the floor, but it was on par with non-Vegas casinos I've seen in Tunica and other somewhat small cities. The poker room had seven PokerPro tables and I was really impressed with how they work. They are completely automated and computerized, with every step of the game being run on the touch screen, from buy-in to cash out. You deposit funds at the casino's cashier and after that everything can be done at the table. I found the interface to be quite user friendly, which is good, since this is clearly the direction poker will head in the future. Purists will cling to cards and chips, but eventually it is going to be difficult to argue with the prospects of faster games, lower casino overhead due to no dealers, and lower player costs without having to tip.

I played $1-$2 No Limit for a while and then entered a qualifying tournament that Oaklawn was running--40 players, with the top four getting paid and the top three advancing to a freeroll in February that will include 30 players vying for $5,000 in payouts to the top three. The quality of the opponents was all over the place--some solid younger guys, some old timers, and some drunks that had clearly been betting on the ponies all day. I played my pretty standard game and managed to cash in third place, meaning I've got a seat in the big freeroll in a few weeks. I look forward to coming back with a shot to take down a nice chunk of change.