JJ Duque Wins Seat To $1,000 Guaranteeed Limit Razz at Full Tilt Poker

Event 14 of the 2010 World Series of Poker featured a $1,500 buy-in  No Limit Deuce-to-Seven Draw Lowball tournament. 

Basically, Deuce-to-Seven Draw Lowball means the worst, or lowest-ranked, hand wins the pot. The very best possible 2-7 lowball hand is 2-3-4-5-7 of mixed suits. An ace counts as a high card. Flushes and straights count against the player. While a wheel (A-2-3-4-5) is the perfect hand in standard lowball, in Deuce-to-Seven it is usually a losing hand since the straight counts against the player.

According to Event 14 WSOP gold bracelet winner Yan Chen: “A good poker game requires a balance. For example – I’m not putting down other games – but No-Limit Hold’em, especially tournaments, rewards aggression. But aggression is only one component of the full set of skills that are required for a balanced game. Lowball requires a very balanced set of skills. You can’t just try to run over the game. You cannot. You can do that less in this game than in any other game. But you also can’t just sit around and wait for a hand. So, you have to be creative. Lowball allows a certain amount of creativity. It allows a certain amount of aggression. It rewards patience. This is a game of nuances. It is not a game of raw power."”

Of course, when I considered my picks for Full Tilt Poker's Fantasy Poker League, I looked to veterans of poker and especially those with a lot of WSOP gold bracelet experience. Some of my picks included: Doyle Brunson, Andy Bloch, Barry Greenstein, Phil Ivey, Phil Hellmuth and Chris Ferguson. But eventually, it was my pick of Erik Seidel, which earned me enough points to win a seat for the $1,000 Guaranteed Limit Razz at Full Tilt Poker.

Thanks to Erik Seidel for getting me the seat. There were 549 players entered at the tournament with $237 going to first place. Unfortunately, I missed playing the tournament and was blinded out to finish 481st.

However, I did qualify for another $1,000 Guaranteed Limit Razz event because of my Fantasy Poker League picks on Event 19 of the 2010 World Series of Poker, a $10,000 buy-in No Limit Deuce-to-Seven Draw Lowball Championship tournament. I changed some my picks, and did some research on successful Deuce-to-Seven Lowball players, and some of those included Alexander Kravchenko, David Pham, Michael Mizrachi and Greg "FBT" Mueller. But eventually, the players that had good success were Andy Bloch, Erik Seidel (again) and John Juanda, who also made the final table. Because of their success, I have a second shot at another $1,000 Guaranteed Limit Razz event at Full Tilt Poker. And this time I intend to play!