CRStals' Adventures in the Bahamas!

[Martin]

Well played Chris, unlucky final hand, nothing more you could do there, how close to the bubble were you?

 

[Kenzie 96]

Kudos Chris handled it quite well. Martin I think they payed 175.

 

[SpanRmonka]

An incredible run! Super unlucky on the final hand.
Enjoy the rest of your time, and good luck in any other games!

 

[antonis32123]

Unlucky last hand , GG Chris , you did your best and you had great experiences, next time you 'll be luckier . So close ITM , but this is poker , only thing you can do is move to the next game .

 

[Chabita03]

Nice play

 

[balo]

UL runner runner flush is not a good way to bust when you have the best hand after the flop. Well played and GL in the other tourneys.

 

[whiskers77]

It is so... I was able to get chips the first ten hands and up to 73k when I found AQdd and shoved 12BB. The Big blind (table chip leader) called off with K3ss and the board ran out Qs5d5hJsAs to river the nut flush.

Oddly enough, I'm disappointed but happy with how I played and proud to make it this deep. I think I finishes 247 out of 1014 in a $25k...not too shabby for an amateur

Oh, I can feel you, I had a similar situation when I played in the 888 live games in London. I also won a package to this and lasted till day 3.
I think I was around 30-60 places away from the money then I busted.
On the one hand, you think, just cool that you were able to participate and have this trip, on the other hand, you really think like usually,
when you bubble or do not come into the money. I think, on such an occasion even harder than online.
But do not worry or feel bad, you made this really, really good! And you got this special experience!

 

[Propane Goat]

Congrats on the deep run Chris, enjoy the rest of your trip!

 

[Luvepoker]

Great run Chris. You made us at Cardschat proud. You right to be proud at how it went for you getting so deep in a $25K event. I wish you a great rest of your trip and safe travels home.

 

[CRStals]

Thanks everyone!

I'm planning on a full blog with photos this week but I'll throw this out there. Since there was no time to ask questions for the podcast, if anyone does have one drop it here and I'll include it in my rundown

 

[ADRI7HO]

It is so... I was able to get chips the first ten hands and up to 73k when I found AQdd and shoved 12BB. The Big blind (table chip leader) called off with K3ss and the board ran out Qs5d5hJsAs to river the nut flush.

Oddly enough, I'm disappointed but happy with how I played and proud to make it this deep. I think I finishes 247 out of 1014 in a $25k...not too shabby for an amateur

It must have been a great experience, and as I look at the pictures of the Bahamas (it can be a beautiful place) it was worth it to participate in the tournament.
Congrats again! 🤜🤛

 

[MTCashman]

Ouch unlucky way to go out man, but well played. I bet you still had a great time! What an awesome trip eh?

 

[Poker Orifice]

Thanks everyone!

I'm planning on a full blog with photos this week but I'll throw this out there. Since there was no time to ask questions for the podcast, if anyone does have one drop it here and I'll include it in my rundown

So is there still a full blog with photos coming? I've been checking around and haven't seen or found anything yet & was hoping to check it out.

 

[moots]

Good game Chris, must have been an awesome experience!

 

[CRStals]

Well I'm LONG overdue doing this but it's been crazy getting caught up since being back from the Bahamas so I'm going to detail my experience over the next few days along with some photos and videos I took. I want to be able to recall as much as possible from the time at the Baha Mar and share with you all just how insane of an experience this was - which I would highly HIGHLY encourage anyone who can try and qualify for the third edition to do so!!

Sunday Jan 29th
I woke up to snow falling in the greater Toronto area around 4:30am Given that I'm about an hour or so to the airport I wanted to make sure I had enough time to get there and not worry about security or getting behind snow plows on the road. After saying goodbye to my wife, I was able to get to Pearson just before 6:15am and made my way to terminal 3 where fellow Team Ontario membes Jenn Carter and Chad McVean were meeting me to pack our t-shirts better. After fumbling with everyone's luggage and getting bags checked, we passed security with relative ease and made our way to the gate. At this point I realized I only had US $20's on me so after attempting to exchange them for smaller bills with no luck, ended up buying $40 USD at an insane exchange rate. Note - NEVER exchange currency at the airport! After grabbing breakfast, Jonathan Newman and his crew showed up, as did Team PokerStars Pro Arlie Shaban. We opted for the later WestJet flight as other members of Team Ontario were flying out earlier. The flight was full, and I was seated next to a nice couple that I came to find out was another platinum pass winner! Sasan Mehrabian won his pass in Las Vegas and was considered a US winner despite the fact he lived in Toronto so that was cool getting seated next to him, and while we hadn't met him yet, Amir from Team Ontario was also on the flight and got to say hi to him.

An uneventful flight and we landed just after 1:00 in Nassau and after clearing customs and getting my bag we all boarded a bus to the hotel. 10mins later we were pulling into the Baha Mar and was just in awe of the size of the property. I'll post some photos later, but we were brought in, checked in - said hello to Felix Schnieders and thankfully my room was ready so I went up and got settled.

I explored the hotel for a while before heading down to the tournament area to scope out the lay of the land. I was amazed by the entrance to the conference center and how everything was set-up. The area was fairly quiet as the final table of the PCA was on, along with the women's event - SIDE NOTE - if you ever want to watch the most fun tournament ever, the women know how to have fun while playing! But I registered for my tournament iD's and got my seat for the PSPC, picked up my expense money which was a little unnerving walking into a room with visibility armed military guard with machine guns guarding it. I then got my swag and noted the position of quieter bathrooms before heading back to the hotel to meet up with people for the player's party. Before the party we met up with other members of Team Ontario - Todd, Erez and Daryl and their partners. The gang was all together for the first time! We chatted for a bit before I went back to the tournament area to watch & ended up railing the $1100 HORSE event that was heads up for the title. I recognized Benny Glaser right away but his opponent was unknown to me - learned later he is Scott Bohlman who cashed 5 times at the PCA including winning this HORSE event. I railed for about 90 mins before I went off to get

The party was crazy and definitely a great way to kick off the PSPC. Got to meet quite a few people that were there - got to talk briefly with Sam Grafton, James Hartigan, Joe Stapleton, Robbie Strazynski and his wife and saw Spraggy (he's REALLY tall) and Vanessa Kade to name a few. At the end I met Willie Elliot who handed me my platinum pass finally which was an awesome end to the day and really got me energized to play the PSPC the next day!

 

[mj22]

Wow Chris, this just the start and already excited what you might share later. Without the photos and until now everything looks great.
We know that this event is a very big and nice one as in opportunity and adventure, we only saw it through channels and videos by the organizers but not by someone like you we interact with each day. So, while reading this we can think of what it would feel like if we had the chance to be there someday. Visualizing scenarios in my head of what you wrote because of the details you gave.
Anyone would love to try this experience even without no one talking about it, so how about you sharing yours? This as you said definitely would encourage players.
Meeting with players and have to travel with them is really something nice and good you guys did because such trip can never be fun in going alone.
Willie Elliot is a great person you could ever meet from the PokerStars team. He was a great help and kindest to me in long-time emails about a reward for me.
Glad you had the best time and thanks for sharing it with us and for the tips! Cant wait for the rest of the blog.

 

[valeski 28]

Sad you could not get in the money this time Chris but you gave your best in the tournament.We are proud of you mate

 

[CRStals]

Alright so it's been a while since I updated my thread, so I'm hoping to finish it over the next week. While it's been a few months since my adventure, the memories are etched with me forever it feels like!

MONDAY 1/30

I woke up around 7am feeling refreshed and ready to go. I did a face time call home to say good morning to my wife and kids as they all got ready to go to school (my wife's a teacher) and then after got showered and dressed and headed down to the free buffet breakfast all pass winners and their plus one's got. Poker players are NOT morning people so the breakfast was relatively empty at 8am when it opened. I ran into Daryl Inglis and his girlfriend who were also morning people having breakfast and this turned into a daily activity - one that I greatly enjoyed every day. Well except for one where i was a bit late getting down. Finishing up I walked around the tournament area for a bit, then went back to my room. I did some studying, looked up my table draw and checked my work e-mail (it was a holiday but life at work doesn't stop while I was gone) and headed back to the tournament area around 11am to start meeting up with the Team Ontario crew. Some of us had some media availability with the Poker.org team before they were going to film us walking in just before 12. The day before the area was relatively quiet but today the energy was electric. We saw the Spanish walk in chanting, singing and waving their hats, led by the reigning champ Ramon Colillas, and caught time on the PokerStars broadcast as the crew spotted Arlie with us.

After exchanging hugs, hive fives and handshakes I made my way over to table 19 on the very far side of the room where I found my seat for the next 8 hours. At my table;
19-1 - Arturo Biarge Carnicer
19-2 - Istvan Fabian
19-3 - Jared Michel Haiter
19-4 - Istvan Laszio Pilhofer
19-5 - Me
19-6 - Alexander Tkatschew
19-7 - Georgy Philippovich
19-8 - Colton Blomberg

The two names that stood out to me over the course of the day was Istvan P. (EPT Prague Main Event final table, 3rd place) and Colton Blomberg (Experienced pro, over $1.2M in winnings). I friended both of these guys and ran into them several times over the week - amazing, stand up, humble guys that I hope to share the felt with again.

So we get to 12pm and the tournament director kicks off the tournaemnt with Bruce Buffer giving the call to shuffle up and deal and we got going. On hand 1 Istvan F and Colton almost got it all in - 2nd nut straight versus the nut straight, no flush, no pair. Colton said if he had shoved, he would have tanked but would have been forced to call it off and he would have been gone (he ended up cashing too). Crazy stuff.
I detailed out my hands at the time so won't go through it again but QQ was my friend and foe that day 1, losing a big pot to 94s (Thanks Colton) but doubling up QQ v AQ on a Q high flop.

We didn't see many eliminations during the day and because we were table 19 we weren't broken as over 700 survived so we literally played with not a ton of chips on the table as the blnds went up over the course of the day.