Kiwi Poker Freeroll Thoughts...

The CheckRayz Leaderboard Tour tore up the felt at Kiwi Poker last night during our Freeroll Poker Tournament. I was performing triple duty, playing in Shark's awesome Sun event, throwing chips around at kiwi, and tending to "Daddyz lil angelz" all at once. Before discussing the tourney, I want to address something.

There was a miscommunication of some sort, it seemed, regarding Shark's start time at the sun. I made a similar error as well, releasing a 9pm start time at Kiwi, as opposed to 8pm. We do make mistakes. Everyone does. When registering for tourneys, I get in the practice of verifying what it is (and when) I am registering for. When you're the busiest man in the business, like Sharky is, or a hard-working rookie such as myself, sometimes events or other things become confusing. So, please, no hate mail on this (though, I may publish some in my Friday Night mailbag column). If anything, show sharky some love by telling him that you appreciate all he does for the Army, and continue to show him the love and support that he works so damn hard to maintain. Hats off to ya shark!

Nuff said there. On to the Kiwi Freeroll Tourney. I came out firing early, getting some quality cards and benefitting from the scent of weakness. Its trouble when I get off to an early lead, as I don't consider myself a cheap date by any means. I continued punishing the table, taking down some nice sized pots, relative to the blinds. On a key hand, I called a 2x raise in the late position (yes, I do occasionally call late, to keep it real). Flop comes 3-3-3. Looking at my hole cards, I am loving life. Blinds check to the raiser, raiser pushes all-in, one fold to me. I look down into the hole and see my pocket nines. I think this through, counting only a three, and 5 other pocket pairs above me that can beat me. I don't "think" he'd only raise 2x with AA-QQ, so that leaves JJ-1010 as probibilities. There's six pp's that are behind in the count. This guy could have any of the above. Then again, he could have AK, AQ. I have him covered and decide to reraise, in hopes of showing down heads-up, putting him on a smaller pp, AK, AQ (assigning about 70% probibility of this in my mind), and 30% probability of AA-1010). Blinds fold as expected. I'm crushed when he turns over his Aces. He mowed me down with "authorita." Well done!

BB hits me at the same time pocket 4's do, and tootal raises up on the cutoff. I call. I nail a set on the flop, he flushes the turn. Prayers for a boat to navigate the river go unanswered, nh gg, I'm outie. Got the kiddies to bed and came back for the final table. Tootal, by the way, put forth a strong finish in the 9th position, taking down some leaderboard points. He was "sandwiched between two monsterous stacks." Phenominal play at the finals table, specifically among the final three. Lots of lead changes, smart folding, hard betting. Shark Tour standout, Greenhippy went on to win the event, mowing down his last two obsticles (scgj, and molnarkc). "This is funny, I've only been doing this since October," a festive Hippy says on his first CheckRayz win in two final tables appearances. Well, hippy dude, some people are fast learners and a natural for the game. U one of them, bro. Great job, nice win and more to follow! Thanks to all who participated.

CheckRayz will return to Kiwi Poker on Feb 8 at 9pm in a $10.75+1 private qualifier to win a seat in the NZ Poker Champs Super Satellite ($200+15). 1 seat per twenty entries. Additionally, I have one of those $200+15 seats on my head, as there will be a bounty to launch my donk ass.




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