The Wild Final Hand In Saturday’s Satellite That Won My Seat To WPT Rolling Thunder

I’m not going to bore with you all the hands that led up to the final one in Saturday’s 1pm $550 satellite to Sunday’s $3500 WPT Rolling Thunder at Thunder Valley but the last one was something else. 20 seats were guaranteed and 9 players had reached the 140,000 chip milestone and already won their seats. There were 12 players left fighting for 11 seats. I had just been moved to one table from another. At my previous table was a player named Mark who had less than one big blind. My new table also had one players who was around one big blind.

The blinds were 6000/12000/12000 and I had 14,000 chips on the button. UTG – a big stack – pushed and I looked down at KK. At first I wasn’t entirely sure what to do with it given how short two other players were. Ultimately I decided that I had to go with the hand because if it held up I would win a nice pot and one of the other two would likely be the bubble. So I called. The big blind asked me if I was All In and looked ready to call for what he thought was only 2,000 more chips when I pointed out that the other players was All In. If he mistakenly called that could have put a snafu in everything!

At any rate, I called. The other table had an All In involving Mark as well. If my hand got beat and his held up, he would win the seat and I’d be the bubble. My opponent turned over A9off and I said to the dealer: “Don’t do it to me.” The window was the Ah and my heart sunk but another card on the flop was the Kh giving me a set and a stranglehold on the hand. My hand held up, Mark’s didn’t and I won my seat. It was as dramatic a hand as I’ve played in my nearly 20 year poker career that I can recall given the situation and the stakes.

So I’ll be playing Day 1 of WPT Rolling Thunder at Thunder Valley tomorrow (Sunday) at 11am.