World Series is coming to St Louis

Since Missouri always had loss limits, there was never a chance of having higher buy in tournaments (or ring games for that matter). Recently, Missouri lifted those loss limits and now a WSOP Circuit Event is coming to St Louis. The prelims actually start either today or tomorrow with the 5K Main event starting in a couple of weeks.

I play in a WSOP monthly league. The basic gist is that 36 of us play every month and a little bit of money goes to that tourney; but the rest goes towards WSOP packages in Vegas. We will have 8 people going to Vegas. Unfortunately, I won't be one of those eight. I sit in 11th place with 2 more to go. Top 7 from standings get a trip and one Wildcard Tourney winner get a trip. I can't remember the breakdown; but I think it may be 3 Main Event and 5 Prelim events with some travel money thrown in there.

When St Louis announced that the Circuit Event, we decided to also include this. So 31 of the 36 decided to throw in 30 more dollars a month for 6 months and we would award one Main event and one prelim.

Through 5 events, I sat in 2nd place 4 pts behind the leader. 3rd place was a distant 12 pts behind. The points are awarded by the place that you finish. 31 pts for 1st... 30 points for 2nd... on down to 1 pt for 31st. Pretty simple.

That brings us to last night. Our final tourney for the St Louis part.

I needed to finish 4 places above leader while still holding off the people behind me. My strategy going in was to play even more conservative than I normally do for the first bit to at least finish in the top 1/2 which would basically eliminate the others from catching me.

I lost a bunch early on with TT. I raise and get two callers. All lowers on flop and I lead out and get minraised. Third guy also calls and for what ever reason I called. Ace of Turn and it gets checked around. I fold to a bet on river. 3rd guy flopped a straight holding 43s. OOP he limp calls and got paid off. We start with around 5K in chips and I was down to almost 3K.

A few orbits later I get KK and raise from early position to something like 600 (blinds 100/200 at this point). I then get raised to 3K which is more or less my whole stack. I deserve a little ridiculing here; but I didn't snap push my other few hundred as I had points to think about. He could have Aces, or any Ax hand and that would be a stinky way to lose. He had Jacks and my Kings hold up.

Nothing exciting and we are down to 2 tables from our 4 starting tables. I would say I am average in chips. The 1st place guy is also average in chips. I get moved to his table.

To make a long story shorter, I hopes and dreams take a huge blow when I raise from EP with AKs and somebody pushes over the top of me and of course I call. He has AQ and the Q comes on the river leaving me with just a couple thousand chips. I push a couple times with AJ and 88 and don't get called.

We are now down to 6 people and I have to finish 4 places above the 1st place guy. He is really short and chips and finally goes out in 6th. I now have to finish 2nd for a tie in which we do a mini heads up tourney or 1st to win the 5K package.

I actually get Aces twice; but get no action.

At the end of the day, I couldn't pull it off as I finished 4th. I do win the prelim event for finishing 2nd so at least I have that going for me. I will playing in that Next week some time. It should be fun. They are 40 minute levels starting with about 160BB. Not great; but certainly better than your normal casino tourney.

We'll see how it goes.

Have a nice day!!!!