Breaking News: Cort Kibler-Melby made the final table!

Cort (last seat, next to the dealer) who runs the poker-tester forum made it to the final table of what is now the third biggest live tournament in the world. Event #49 of the WSOP (the $1,500 No-Limit Hold'em) had 3,151 participants. From the nine left only Greg "FBT" Mueller is a well known name.

Cort, who lives in Berlin turned 21 about half a year ago. So making a final table at is first WSOP event is a huge accomplishment. Congratulations and good luck. He's sixth in chips (little below average) so anything can happen. Unfortunately we can't watch it live as they play this finale again behind the black curtain.

My day wasn't that good at all. At the Planet Hollywood tournament I lost my stack early with set over set. I got QQ UTG an raised it to 3BB. Got reraised from seat two. One caller in MP and I called too. My first thought was he has AA. But then I remembered that this guy took down a lot of pots by just overbetting them so the range for his reraise was much bigger. Flop came QA8 with two spades. I loved the queen but hated the ace. If he had aces and I bet he most probably would just call and I would get no information. So I checked and he made a pot-size bet. The other caller folded. I was sure he wanted to represent the aces but his bet was way too big for a huge hand like a set of aces. Most people would check their set here and hope for a bet on the turn. So I put him on AK of spades. I reraised him and he went all-in. The pot was now too big to let this hand go and I called. He hand indeed AA and busted me. But he also put me on the wrong hand as he was very surprised to see my QQ's. Seems we had simmilar thoughts and he put me on AK of spades too. Therefore his bet was the best he could do. Unfortunately this trapped me into a wrong assumption about his hand. And to be honest: I made to critical mistakes in this hand. The first one was not to go with my first impression and the second one was to underestimate his fear regarding a possible flushdraw.

As this was a shorter tournament than expected I tried to play a $70 SnG at the Mirage. But their organisation is plain horrible. They offer three buy-in sizes ($70, $115, $175). Several people had put there name on ore than one list. But instead of scratching the names from the board after the $175 SnG had started they left it like it was. At the end they had ten names for the $115 and ten for the $70. As the casino wants to make as much money as possible they announced the $115 SnG first which was abolute senseless as half of the people from the list already played in the $175. And ten people that wanted to play the $70 SnG just had to wait. Well, not ten anymore because I told them to scratch my name form the list. Now they had two tables short of players.

Quite soon I found out that this was a good decision. Because back to the Rio I decided to have a look at the Amazon-Room. I was almost there when Cort crossed my way. We said hello and had some nice chat as I hadn't seen him since he arrived in Vegas. But he looked somewhat like being on the run. And of course he was. He told me he's still in the tournament and they are just on a short break. 15 people left. "Wait! You mean you are one of the 15 left in this big tournament with over 3,000 people"? It was exactly that and of course I joined Sutti and Olli to cheer for Cort on his way to the final table.

One more small tournament for me tomorrow and the Las Vegas vacation is over. But the WSOP isn't and the most important event is still to come. But I loved this week even so the results weren't as good as I hoped. And of course I will be back next year!