by Yesterday the woman in the UK cancelled her 2pm lesson – she misses Romania and is going through a tough time mentally in general. With that extra break in my schedule, I played a $1.10 buy-in satellite into last night’s $22 SCOOP triple draw tournament. Out of 94 entrants, the top four made it through. In the early stages I profited from being at a table of people who were either sitting out or hadn’t the foggiest idea of the rules. If I made any sort of hand I could just keep betting and raising. These players were quickly eliminated, and from then on I needed to win the big pots when it mattered, which I did. At one point I made the nuts against the second nuts. On the final table I found myself in the unusual position of having the biggest stack by far and being able to coast into the main tournament which started at 9:15 pm. As soon as the satellite was over, the police called me, asking me to come in early the next morning to make an official statement about my bike. Damn, this tournament could go on all night and I could be buggered by then. Should I even bother?
In all probability my two-hour battle to win a SCOOP ticket would be for naught; just over 15% got paid. Unlike in the satellite, most of the 1319 players in the main tournament actually knew the rules (though how they played varied enormously), and some of them were high rollers and/or had intimidating badges to say that they’d won SCOOP events in the past. They’d probably played hundreds of the things. By the first break I had a bit more than the 25,000 chips I started with, by the second break I was up to two and a half times my starting stack, and by the third break I had over five times. In other words I was doing pretty well. But when we resumed at midnight it all came crashing down in the space of a few hands. My number four was beaten by number two and that left me crippled, but I partially bounced back. Then, with 72,000 chips in my stack, I got involved in a huge three-way pot with an excellent draw and immediately made the second nuts, but on the last draw somebody clearly made a big hand. If my hand had beaten his, my stack would have been 158,000 and I’d have had an eye on the top prizes. Had he shown the same hand as mine, I’d have had 91,000. But no, he showed the stone-cold nuts and I was left with 24,000. So much can hinge on just one hand, and after that unavoidable disaster I was almost dead meat and unlikely to get a payout at all. I hung in there somehow. The top 215 paid, and as the money bubble approached I went into near-shutdown mode. (Normally I don’t care much about min-cashing, because it’s such a small payout compared to your buy-in, but because I’d satellited in, the min cash was many times my original buy-in, so I was unusually bothered.) There was a player at my table with even fewer chips than me, and he stalled to try and flop over the line and get a min cash. Finally the bubble burst, and I was soon out in 202nd place for a $36 prize. Not quite what I managed in my only other SCOOP all those years ago (second place for a few grand), but at least I got something. My bankroll is now $516. I intend to play two more SCOOP events (directly; no satellites) next week.
The rollercoaster ride (maybe it was more like Oblivion at Alton Towers) finished just before one o’clock, but I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about my parents (when will I see them again?) and my cousin’s youngest son. I had to be up at seven so I could make that damn (almost certainly pointless) police statement. The city of Timișoara, as I’ve just found out, is split into five police sections, and it seems to be something akin to gerrymandering that places the station (a 45-minute walk from here) in the same section as where I live. Gosh, the statement. I had to start by writing Declarație and underlining it. Then I was interrogated about where and when and what kind of lock and are there cameras and so on and so forth. The policeman dictated the statement for me to write, and I had to pen a page and a half of Romanian. Reședință. Is that with an e or an i in the middle? He asked me to state my reședință, my residence, my home, but where exactly is home? As far as I’m concerned, Timișoara is home now, or the closest thing to it. The cops clearly had no shortage of time on their hands, and that’s got to be a good sign. This city, touch wood, is pretty safe. So I got some useful Romanian writing practice. I was knackered after that, and had a doze at lunchtime.
