POTD #132 I Travel back to 2020 to Prepare for my Return to Online Poker

A hand from the "Poker Players Championship" vs the Eventual Champ

On March 14th of this year, I played two bullets of the 50k Short Deck in Jeju, I busted unceremoniously and flew back home. Those were the last hands of high-stakes poker I played. In the subsequent 6 months and one week, I have played three poker tournaments and cashed two of them: I won the Hands Helping Hands charity poker tournament, I cashed the tournament VClub hosted as part of Toronto Tech Week, and I played another VClub tournament after I gave a lecture on the value of position at their Mastery Monday series. Today, September 23rd, will be my grand return to high-stakes poker, as I will play the GG $25k Online Bracelet Event and the GG $10k Super Millions Day 1C. I am excited to get back into the swing of things and will be writing about my play in future POTDs, although hopefully I will have nothing to write about, as I will aim to play flawless poker.

To commemorate my return to poker playing a $25K bracelet event on GGPoker, I have decided to look back at the first $25k WSOP Bracelet Event GGPoker ran, the “Poker Players Championship”— why GG stole the name of an existing tournament with an established brand is beyond my comprehension, but hey, that’s the name they went with. On August 23rd, 2020, I put in $175,300 in BIs and cashed in one tournament for $27,589.23; my net result in swaps was $5,858. and I lost a whopping $141,852.77. One of the biggest losing days I’ve ever had playing online tournaments. Early on in the tournament, I made a big river call vs. Christian Rudolph and was wrong; he would end up winning the whole tournament for $1.8M. The tournament allows for multiple re-entries and I am not sure if he ended up re-entering, but for our purposes, I will say my call on the river gave him two starting stacks early on and was an early stepping stone that led to his eventual victory. Hopefully as I play poker today, I will also receive a punt during an early level of the tournament and spin it up to win millions.

Hand History: GG Poker

WSOP #70 $25,000 NLH Poker Players Championship $10M GTD
(600/1200/150) (SB/BB/ANTE) Registration is still open.

It folds to me in the LJ and I (117,500) make it 2800 with K♥️Q♣️, it folds to Christian Rudolph (169,270) in the CO who calls, everyone else folds.

Flop (8,600): Q♥️7♠️6♦️: I check, Christian checks.
Turn (8,600) J♦️: I bet 13,400, Christian calls.
River (35,400) A♥️: I check, Christian bets 27,548, I call and lose to Q♠️J♠️.