My second match of day 02 was against T.J. Cloutier. I’d never played with him before and that was probably to my advantage. It seemed like he’d been playing pretty tight in his earlier matches so I decided to be aggressive from the start. The match ended up being relatively stress free because he didn’t pick up many cards, and when he did, I either had a better hand or I made an easy fold.

 

Blinds 400/800:

 

I made it $2,400 with 8, 8. He made it $7,000 more. I thought for a while and decided to fold. I showed the eights, he showed the jacks.

 

Blinds 1,000/2,000:

 

He raised to $5k and I called with J, 9 of hearts. The flop 10, 5, 6 with two hearts. Check check. The turn was a jack. I bet $5k. He made it $18k and I went all-in. He said he folded Q, Q.

 

Towards the end of the match, I flopped the bottom straight and he made top pair and an open ended draw to the ignorant end of the straight. I bet large and he called. The board paired and then since the board got scary, we checked it down. My hand held up and I took down a nice pot. After that, I had about ¾ of the chips. I raised the next pot and he picked up 4, 4, which had served him well against Tuan Le, but when he shoved, he picked a bad spot because I was holding Q, Q.