SCOOPing

My friend Cardgrrl won a $215 SCOOP ticket in a blogger freeroll a few months ago. The other day she told me she had decided to use it on the HORSE event Saturday, 2:00 p.m. my time. I decided I would railbird the thing with her, and marked the time on my calendar.

Today, while mentally sort of mapping out my weekend, I got to thinking that it would be a lot more fun to play that tournament with her rather than just sitting at home watching her play from 2400 miles away. However, $215 is more than I keep in my Stars account, and realistically I'm not good enough at HORSE to make it a sound investment of that much money. But I thought there must be satellites for it. I checked, and one was about to start. At the time there were only three players signed up, with one seat guaranteed, constituting a sizable overlay and +EV. So I entered.

The overlay disappeared with some late registrations, but damn if I didn't manage to win the thing!



It was a dreadfully uneventful experience, I'm afraid--no dramatic suckouts in either direction. (OK, there was one--I hit a gutshot to Broadway on 6th street in stud to push over the edge a guy that was already on Super Monkey Tilt from a one-outer a couple of hands before. He was one of those idiots that claim to be better than everybody else in chat--you know the type, "If it weren't for luck I'd win 'em all.") I was never chip leader until we were down to four players, but I was also never below average stack. I entered heads-up play with a nearly 3:1 chip advantage, but the limits were so big by then that one big pot could change that around.

The last hand surprised me:



I only called on 4th street because of having four to a low; it seemed unlikely that he would be making a low, so I was just hoping for a chop. (Yeah, I know, not the world's greatest strategy. Spare me the lectures.) When he made trip aces on 5th and I secured my low, I was nearly certain we would chop it, so I was just calling behind.

I was shocked when the entire pot came my way, and the screen announced I had won. I had not even noticed that I had a straight draw on 6th, let alone that I had hit it on 7th. As I always say, the best pots are the ones you don't expect to win.

Want another example of how dense I can be? When we were three-handed, the other remaining player was the one on my immediate right. I caught myself thinking, "I hope that the guy on the left is the next one out so that when we're heads-up I have position." D'oh!

I think I'm close to being dead money in the SCOOP event, but at least I'm only $39 of dead money instead of $215, and I think it might be $39 worth of fun.

It's about a trillion-to-one longshot, but me and Cardgrrl finishing 1 and 2 in this event would be just about the only thing I can imagine, poker-wise, that would be more delightful than finishing 1-2 in a Mookie and the too-good-to-be-true way we ended a live session at the Luxor last year.