JJ Duque Places 6th In $6,000 Guaranteed Six-Handed at BetUS Poker

SIX SIX SIX!

A week ago, I won a tournament to claim a seat to the Daily $6,000 Guaranteed Six-Max at BetUS Poker, which was a No Limit Hold'em tournament with 6 players maximum per table. 112 players entered the tournament which guaranteed 20 places paid at least $87 all the way to first place for $1,440.

The tourney was played here in Manila at 3AM. I had stayed up to watch the England vs Algeria World Cup match, and decided to play the tournament ticket I won a week ago.

The starting stack is 3000 in chips with the blinds at 10/20 in the first level (increasing every 15 minutes), which is a good structure for a long tournament. In the first hand, UTG oddly raises 10x the blinds to 200 with the cutoff calling, and me sitting on the BB with 7c7d calling to see the flop. Three people in the hand, and the flop comes 7s7h2h, and I flop quads!!! I check, UTG overbets 800 probably to protect against the flush-draw, the cutoff raises all-in for 2,800 more, and all I have to do is call. UTG thinks about it, and also makes the call. UTG shows Jacks and cutoff shows Tens. Turn A, River Q, and I immediately triple up on the first hand to 9K in chips!

From there, I play a comfortable and aggressive game, eating my way through the tournament and knocking players out to maintain my chip lead up to the 8th level (150/300 and antes of 30), and my stack sitting on 42K with the next big chip stack miles away at 25K, and the average at 10K. I relinquished my lead at Level 8 on a preflop showdown where my KK called an all-in push of AQ with the A hitting the turn, bringing my stack to around 26K It was still a sizable stack and still 3rd highest with 29 players to go, but the cards went dead for an entire level. At the bubble, I did my best to push around to steal some blinds and antes to improve my stack, but after the bubble, the short stacks were getting anxious and pushing all-in preflop, and I moved my strategy to tighter play.

By level 12 (500/1000 antes of 100), there were only 10 players remaining, and I had around 34K ranking 8th in the chip count with the chip leader at around 80K. For the next few levels, I went up and down and up and down, and just tried to stick around until the final table.

By this time - the tournament had been playing for almost 4 hours. It was past 6AM and my wife was awake to cook breakfast, and gave me that look to see me playing online poker. I told her the good news, and she sat with me to watch my game, excited at the prospect that at least I was guaranteed $294 for making the final table.

The final table started on level 15 (1000/2000 antes of 200). The final table stacks were like this:

Texano90: 101K
DOLPHIN999: 66K
UTRhino:  60K
herace: 56K
JJDuque: 37K
YouRBehind: 13K

It still looked good, and I just had to wait to get cards, or just bust out behind the other player who was short-stacked. Amazingly enough, however, YouRBehind had a good run of cards and was able to double up through Texano90 twice to move him past me at around 50K. With around 22K left, this is how my final hand played out:

Dealer: Hand #5260896G6J000712
Level 15 1000/2000 Blinds Ante 200
Dealer: Texano90 posts ante of 200
Dealer: DOLPHIN999 posts ante of 200
Dealer: UTRhino posts ante of 200
Dealer: YouRBehind posts ante of 200
Dealer: herace posts ante of 200
Dealer: JJDuque posts ante of 200
Dealer: Texano90 posts small blind 200
Dealer: DOLPHIN999 posts big blind 400
Dealer: Dealing hole cards
Dealer: UTRhino folds
Dealer: YouRBehind folds
Dealer: herace folds
Dealer: JJDuque is all in
Dealer: Texano90 folds
Dealer: DOLPHIN999 calls 22,417
Dealer: JJDuque shows Qs, 10s
Dealer: DOLPHIN999 shows Ah, Jd
Chat is now enabled
Dealer: Dealing flop: [ Jc, 8h, 2d ]
Dealer: Dealing turn: [ 4s ]
Dealer: Dealing river: [ Kh ]
Dealer: DOLPHIN999 wins 47,034 with Pair of Jacks
Tournament: JJDuque is eliminated and is
placed 6th
Tournament: JJDuque wins $294 at 6th place.

Sixth Place at A $6K Guaranteed Six-Handed that finishes past 6AM. What can I say? Pretty good morning. Oh yeah - And it's just a day before Father's Day!