One of the IM's I returned to after my Madeline Island trip was from CR guest pro JSchnett, "when you win a live tournament you are supposed to update your blog i think." He's probably right...

Last Sunday on the 10th, I played in Canterbury's $1500 "Twin Cities Poker Open." It had a 10:30am start time, lord knows how I was able to make it -- especially after factoring in when my alarm went off at 9:30am there were still 8 other people sleeping in my house after a night of drinking at my place and at Williams' Peanut Bar.

The tourney, like every Canterbury tournament, has a super fast structure. I know there are lots of people who like to whine and moan about fast structures, but I really think that any structure has an optimal strategy, and a fast structure tourney like Canterbury's can be super profitable for someone who understands it, since most the players there do not and end up playing way too tight in all stages of it while the looser, aggressive players widdle away at everyone's stacks with constant blind steals.

My starting table was actually pretty tough compared to the rest of the field, and when we were finally broken with 7 tables to go (173 entries) we had only had two bust outs the entire time. For the second straight $1500 tourney at CB, I was seated with position on my buddy Dave P, who unfortunately funded my large stack via a tough cooler. In the hand, 1k/2k blinds, the CO opened to 5k, Dave made it 15k from the button, and I pushed all in for 50k in the BB with KK. Dave called with QQ and lost, pushing me up over 100k and into the chip lead of the entire tournament, and him down to 8k or so. From that point on I was on cruise control and got to the final table as chip leader at around 450k chips (about 2.6M chips in play). Once again, I can't emphasize enough how in these structures, if you can accumulate a decent chip stack within the first couple of hours, it is really tough to not make a deep run because most people end up playing way way way too tight when the blinds and antes are super large in relation to the average stack size.

So yeah, at the final table I played a few pots where I got lucky and/or look bad. That happens though. I ran hot at the final table, which is what it takes to win a tournament. One debatable hand, it was 4k/8k 1k ante, folded to me in the SB, 6 handed, with about 420k chips, and I made it 20k with 74 of spades. Mike Carlson, another super good Minnesota kid who is probably one of the most consistently successful players ever in these canterbury tournaments, called with his 290k stack. The flop came K64 with two hearts and one spade. I bet 20k, he raised to 90k, and I called after much thought about all three options. I figured there was some chance that he could be making this raise with any flopped pair, any flopped draw, or even once in a blue moon with a total airball such as T9. I suspected once I called his flop bet, my call would be scary enough to shut him down on the turn with a lot of those hands and I may very well get a free showdown, since Mike knows I am not someone who makes big folds. I know most people hate my flop call, but oh well. I was there, it was my read and instincts, I went with it. The turn brought an 8 of spades, giving me a gutshot and a flush draw along with the pair. This specific card changed my whole entire plan for the rest of the hand, as I decided to bet 100k (more or less pot committing Mike if he chooses to continue) and use my bet as a semi-bluff of sorts since if he has a 6 or 4 he may decide to lay his hand down, yet if I'm behind then I still got a plethora of outs to hit and end up being a huge huge chip lead. Anyway, he pushed all in, and I called the remaining 80-90k and missed against his 75o that turned the nuts.

Later when I had 230k chips and was the small stack with 5 people left, I pushed all in UTG+1 with 64 suited. My stack was 7-8BBs. The SB woke up with QQ, what a fool he was thinking he could knock me out.... I flopped two pair and returned to being an almost average chip stack.

The only other thing worth mentioning in my tourney summary was before the tourney started, myself, John Hoppmann and David Webb each made a last longer bet with eachother, and all 3 of us ended up making it to the final table. Talk about a tough last longer (David finished 2nd, John 8th)! First was supposed to pay $81,800, but since David and I are friends we ended up changing the payouts from 82-41 to 68-55, so I ended up with ~$68,000 for my first place finish.

Other than the tournament, I spent Thursday-Saturday night at Madeline Island. If you happen to be a midwesterner, it's a must-visit destination. I'd go as far as calling it the "paradise of the midwest" thanks to it having the nicest beach you can find in this region. It is located a couple miles off Bayfield, Wisconsin, on Lake Superior, and you take a ferry out to it. This Madeline Island trip was the 6th summer that my old high school buds and I have done it (every year we've camped at the town park), and is our yearly summer tradition.

The weather was perfect on Friday -- 85 and not a cloud in the sky, and we played half a dozen games of beach volleyball, then spent the night at the local hotspot: "Tom's Burned Down Cafe." The owner is quite the character, in his 60s and 100% a product of the hippie movement which is evidenced by the liberally/free-spirited quotes, slogans, pictures, and sayings splattered all across every wall. The bar itself looks much like the name of the place, since it has burned down 3 times. There is no roof, instead a large canopy that is held up by a few large pieces of lumber. While there, we even witnessed a domestic dispute -- apparently a fiancee was angry that her husband-to-be had his hand on another woman's leg, so, she slapped him up in a style that's usually only seen in hollywood movies (two days later, we learned she ended up being put in jail for it though got out right away when her parents posted her $750 bail).

Saturday we got up early and took the ferry back to Bayfield to catch our 9:30am-12:30pm guided sailboat tour. Again, another perfect day since there was plenty of wind to make the sail enjoyable. It was my first time on a sail boat -- definitely a neat experience. We spent the rest of the afternoon laying around on the beach, and decided to pack up that night and return home instead of early Sunday morning like originally planned. As my friends and I get older, every summer it's getting tougher and tougher to coordinate everyone's schedules to make this trip work. This year we were down to 5 of us (our first trip we had 8). I guess that's another perk of being a poker pro, since it is pretty easy for me to take part in this tradition every year as long as we keep doing it.

Pretty excited for the last 1.5 months of Twins baseball. I really think this might be our year. Hopefully there's no let down since I now finally believe we've assembled all the pieces to make a deep run. Which speaking of, I might be going to a game or two of the Twins-Angels series at Anaheim later this week... just need to finally decide in the next day or two if I'm going to make a California trip this week or not. BK, John, and Dave all might be going out to California at some point, we just need to talk and coordinate and line up our plans.

That's it for today, hope y'all are enjoying your summers and getting out and doing things. I know I have been, and poker has been an after-thought for the most part of the last several weeks. Once fall comes, like last year, I'm going to be putting in a few more sessions and focusing. I know I should be playing more than I am, though I also know this happens every summer after the WSOP where I don't play much -- and I'm ok with that.