Lost Episode 26: Event #55, $10K NL HE, Day 2A

On this day, we brought back all of those players who made it through days 1A and 1B for their second day.  We have essentially the same number of tables and players as we had on either of the first two days, as we've only eliminated about half of the field from each.  However, there seem to be a lot more dealers.  Most of us with less than average experience are worrying about how long we will be needed.  Most want the work and the experience, but a few have regular dealing gigs to get back to and would rather resume those jobs than sit around here.  We are all on "up-downs", which means that you deal a down, go on break for a down, deal another down, if you are lucky.  It's probably more tiresome having so many breaks than if you are actually dealing.  I know that I don't care for it, and many of the dealers in the break room are starting to grumble about the situation.

I notice Pete Giardiano on one of my early tables.  He is an east coast player and quite the character.  He has been giving another player, who he refers to as "Luigi", but pretty sure that's not his real name, quite a bit of guff.  Luigi seems to really be enjoying the experience and appears to have a lot less tournament experience than the other players at the table.  I'm not certain what exactly happened before I pushed in, but I take it there was a significant suck out that moved a good share of tips to Luigi, who was now sitting on a pile.  Luck seems to come in waves, though, and Luigi's run wasn't over just because I took over the box.  On two of my first three hands I dealt him pocket pairs that not only managed to get lots of pre-flop action, but flopped sets over smaller sets held by smallish stacks.  Luigi just knocked off two opponents and now he was getting attention from the hand held camera operators as well.

Despite all the action, I have notes saying that I was really relaxed and having a good time.  I dealt to Tuan Lam at one of my tables, he seemed to be on quite a roll.  Then after a few more up downs, I pushed into a table where Brandon Adams had a fairly large stack and appeared to be on a roll.  Unfortunately for him, though, I dealt the following cooler that sucked some of the wind from his sails.  He made a standard-ish raise from early position and everyone folded around to the button who called and both blinds folded away.  The flop came QcTdJd and I believe the action went check, raise, re-raise, deep thought then all-in declared, and after some deliberation a reluctant call.  Adams tabled two black aces and his opponent tabled 8d9d for the made dummy end of the straight and open-ended straight flush draws.  The turn brought the Ks, which brought Adams a higher straight, but he still needed to fade a diamond and of course the river brought the 3d.  The loss took a chunk of his stack, but he was still among the average stacks at the table and I recall him going pretty deep regardless.