So I headed to Vegas to play a unique version of tournament poker with no idea what to expect. I had been invited to play in the pokerbowl for Team New York, along with Gavin Griffin (who would be my partner), Darrell \"gigabet\" Dicken, Danny Aleai, Victor Ramdin and John D\'Agostino. It wasn\'t a normal every man for himself tournament, but instead a team format made up of 5 different conference tournaments which each had 5-6 player teams. We played the tournament out at 3 separate tables that consisted of 2 teammates at each table, playing down to the final 3 players at each table, then combining the final 9 to play the final table. At no time would any of the tables be balanced to make sure each table had an equal amount of players, so it was basically like a team double shootout sit and go format. Once at the final table, the team with the last player standing (either a winner or having teammates as the last 2 or 3 players left) would move onto the finals with the other conference champions to repeat the process again to determine the winning team.

I felt like we had a very strong team going in, but the structure was worse than crappy with 25 minute levels and the blinds basically doubling every at every increase. You basically had to play pretty tight after the 1st level and be willing to gamble in spots you may not in normal tournaments. It\'s unfortunate when a tournament\'s structure dictates how much faster the players have to play. It\'s not real poker, it\'s more gambling and having to assign player\'s hand ranges when deciding to try and push small edges pre-flop, getting all your chips in before the flop usually. I was fortunate to double early from the 10k starting stack, climb to 30k then eventually 40k before busting in 5th place at the 1st table.

My team was already in bad shape with Danny and Darrell eliminated from the same table, Victor busted and John barely hanging on with 10 big blinds at the other table. Gavin and I were 5-handed when I decided to let my team down and bust when I was 2nd in chips to the chip leader at my table. Gavin and I were the only teammates left at my table, the blinds were 500-1000 w/ 100a when I busted out. UTG had 10k and folded, Gavin who had about 18k then folded, and the button who had about 12k also folded. I had about 28k and looked down to AdQd and raised to 3500, basically telling the chip leader I had a hand and wanted to move onto the next hand. The last thing I wanted to do was play a pot with the chip leader and of course he did exactly what I wanted to do and immediately shoved. He had me covered by about 5 or 6k and I thought for like 2 or 3 minutes before finally deciding to call. I felt like if I won it would assure that Gavin and I would make the final table, plus I would have a lot of chips to be able to try and pass to Gavin before we reached the final table. I really felt like this guy was just starting to abuse the \"bubble\" since we were only 2 from making the final table. I thought he had some kind of decent hand, but not something he wanted me to call, maybe a small to mid pair or even a worse Ace, and the only hand I felt he might do that with that I didn\'t want to face was AK, but I didn\'t feel he had that. I could have folded and still had 25k, but I decided to call and was racing vs. 9h9d.

The flop came down Ac7d2d, just the most beautiful flop ever. At this point I made a highly -EV play as later pointed out by Justin Bonomo, as I got so excited that I yelled in my head that I was going to win this **expletive** tournament. I hadn\'t played much online poker all month, and I finally felt that feeling that makes me love poker. The feeling of being unbeatable, having your opponent drawing to the slimmest of 2 outs for another monster stack. Then the turn brought the ugliest of black nines, and I missed my flush draw on the river and was eliminated. Gavin ended up making the final table and surviving to 4th place, when he got all-in with QK vs 66 and 99 to triple for over 1/3 of the chips in play but somehow missed and we were eliminated.

I really liked the idea behind the poker tournament, thought it was a fun idea and would be up for playing again in the future if they were able to improve the blind structure. I\'m heading out to foxwoods this weekend to play some preliminary events before playing the main event on Wednesday. This will be my first WPT event since the Bellagio. I\'m looking forward to returning to the place where last fall I gained some confidence in my live game making 2 final tables including my 1st ever 6-figure cash. Hopefully I will have some good stuff to report back to you guys.

Until then-
BeL0W