After stacking off a straight-flush draw and getting there for the chip lead at the end of Part 1, the other chip leader and I went back and forth quite a bit.

We were down to two tables, but the other table had no big stacks at it. Fortunately I got the better of this battle, highlighted by turning sixes full on a 2c-5c-5s-6c board after flatting a three-bet pre and calling a flop bet.

It was just unfortunate that he had crap and shut down after the turn.

While playing from 11 players down to seven, I took a bad beat with Ac-10d all in on a 10d-9d-6h flop against Kc-9s, then gave one back with Ah-Jh all in against the other chip leader I'd been tangling with who held Qd-Qc.

Once we got down to six- and seven-handed play, it was time for some serious fun...playing with the chip lead on a short-handed money bubble! The fact that it was 3am and noone wanted to walk away with no money after playing all day seemed to be fresh in my opponents' minds.

For a while I executed my plan pretty flawlessly, raising a ton of pots and winning most of my hands before or after the flop without much resistence. Although the short-handed match had started out very deepstacked thanks to Matt Savage's incredible structures, three players were beginning to get a little shortstacked.

The two toughest opponents, who still had sizeable stacks, were both conveniently located on my left. Unfortunately, I couldn't resist the temptation to not spew to the other big stacks while we were still on the bubble.

In the end, I ended up making a cold-four-bet bluff with J8s into Evgeny Serebryakov's (a young Russian player who just final tabled the WSOP-C $5k at Caesars) As-Ad while we were six-handed.

Then I tried the ole' all-in-on-the-river-with-cheese bluff on him, and he snap-called with top two pair. Oops!

One of the short stacks busted shortly after, and we ended the day a little after 4am with five players remaining. I was 2/5 with 49k at 600/1200, Evgeny had 210k thanks to my donations, and the other stacks were 42k, 25k, and 19k.

Needless to say, I spent the drive back to my friend's house that night replaying those two bluffs in my head and criticizing myself.

The next day, I made the mistake of only leaving 70 minutes before start time to make it 17 miles to the Commerce Casino. Seems reasonable to some, but "some" don't know LA.

As Isaac "mr. menlo" Baron so succinctly put it to me, "LA traffic = the nut low." I showed up almost 15 minutes late, and was down about 6k chips for it. Sigh, damn I-5...

I wasted no time in going after my spewed chips. Evgeny raised the cutoff, I called on the button with J-10d, and we stacked off on a 3c-8d-9s board. Evgeny had Qh-9h, so we were basically coin flipping.

I turned a ten, and it held. Back in business with a dent out of Russia's fortress...

--Matt Stout

"All In At 420"

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