On to the Round of 32

I'm on to the round of 32 to face Alex Bolotin in the World Championship Heads Up No Limit event. Matt Gianetti severely outplayed me, and I don't really deserve to be moving on. Matt and I had very contrasting styles. He raised almost every button and rarely limped or folded. I tried to slow the game down with limps, and I probably folded the button too often. He was very, very tough to play against out of position. In the third level, 45 minutes in, we had been exchanging small pots and he had an 86-74000 lead against me. I raised the button with 66 to 4200 and he reraised me to 14200. He had done a lot of reraising, and this particular hand he absolutely had to have a big hand because he'd reraised 2 out of the last 3 previous BBs. Still, I called to try to end the tournament right there. The flop came QT6, yay. He bet out 19000 and after some thought I moved in for 60200. He beat me in with AA, and I held against his two outs to take a commanding 148-12000 chiplead. This is where disaster struck. On the very next button I moved him in for his last 12000ish with 99. He called with TT and held. He was up to 24000 and as high as 40000 before I grinded him back down to 23000. At 1/2000 I moved him in with Q4cc. He called with A3o. The doorcard was a 4, but the rest of the board rolled off 459AA. Again, I grinded him back down to 33000. This time I picked up J6o and made a suspect shove at 1500/3000. He instantly called with QQ, and I had hope on a board of K94T, but the river missed my two outs and he was now up to 66000. We then had to play poker again and he crushed me. He grinded me all the way down to 60000 now. Now in the seventh level, 2/4000, we'd passed the time it took for me to defeat JC Tran. Matt raised the button to 10500, and I found J6hh and decided to jam it for 60600 total. He thought for two minutes and called with A3cc. The doorcard was the 6, and it held up. I had him down to 30000 and then grinded him down to 20000. On the final hand at 2/4000 I looked down at the Td and decided to jam it from the small blind. He called with K4o. And I found the 5c with my Td. The board came QJ98x and I escaped with a win despite getting outplayed. I would've been sick if he rallied back from 12000 chips. I put him away in 134 minutes total.

Now, I am set to play Alex Bolotin in 50 minutes. Alex is a very good player from Brooklyn. An interesting story...I met Alex for the first time at The Borgata in September. Two years prior, I had spoken with Alex on AOL IMs when I randomly searched for people with the occupation: "Professional Poker Player". I talked to him from time to time for advice as to whether to pursue a career playing poker. I haven't played much with AB, but he is a great player with some solid live tournament results, and I don't expect things to be easy. Right now we're guaranteed 16500 bucks or so, but with 5 more wins I'll have a bracelet at 425000 dollars, hopefully. If I can get by Alex, I'll play the winner of the Carmel Petresco and Jean Kabbaj match.

SS