My 7th place finish in the $3k six-max event at the LA Poker Classic left me with two more events to play for the series: the final preliminary event ($5,100 NL) and the LAPC World Poker Tour $10k event.

The $5,100 event was relatively small with 130 entrants, but still paid $201,730 for first ... which doesn't suck.

I got off to a good start, flopping top two pair and getting paid on the very first hand when I sat down. Then after Kevin "belowabove" Saul had lost a couple big pots in the first level, he four-bet jammed with nines when I had aces.

Now the best part is that Kevin and I have bad blood that goes back a while, and there's good reason for him to be one of my least favorite people in poker.

I'm not a big fan of the slowroll, but this situation warranted...nay, required it in my opinion. I decided on the brief, thirty second slowroll so as to not waste too much of the other players' time.

Part of me wanted to wait until the clock had been called, though...

I had doubled my starting stack of 10k by the first break, but unfortunately that was pretty much my peak for that tournament. I grinded it out for most of the day, but ended up losing a huge pot to Jimmy Tran with a double-gutshot and a flush draw against his weakish top pair.

He tanked for about three weeks before calling, and then managed to fade my fifteen outs.

The interesting part was that he was the first person I ever saw make a big call with one second left on the clock before his hand would have been ruled dead...which was EXACTLY what I was going to do to Kevin in the previous had, coincidentally. lol

I'd like to congratulate my buddy Jason "JP OSU/OUEmoKid" Potter on his win in this event.

Ship $201,730, the TAG watch, and the giant statue of a horse that weighs about eighteen tons. Now he can get over Wasicka putting THREE bad beats on him deep in the Tunica main event last month. Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Matt Stout