Anybody get the number of that truck?

Her name was Shawna, actually. Mother of last Sunday's tourney winner, Montana. And the same Shawna that remembered me at Crystal Park way back.

Nine of us on Sunday, and Kida especially was enamored with Shawna's aggressive style. Or maybe he really likes blondes. She outplayed plenty of people on several different hands early.

The fourth hand after the rebuys were over, I found A8 in my small blind and limped along with everybody else. A-9-3 rainbow flop. Nice. Everybody checked the flop. The turn was a jack, putting two spades out there. Shawna bet out, I checkraised. And she reraised my checkraise with A5. I pushed, and she was pot committed. My kicker ended up playing, and I doubled up early, instead of having to watch everything. Still, her reraise gave me pause.

Her raises put pressure on everybody all night. It was a sight to behold... like a DoubleAs post come to life.

Albert was busted out on a hand that he emailed me about later. A-T-3 flop, two spades. I think it was Shawna that raised preflop. Kida pushed his medium stack all-in, then chipleader Shawna followed suit. Albert thought about it, and called with his AQ, no spades. His top pair was best, for the moment, against Kida's QT, no spades and Shawna's K8-spades. She hit her spade and sent Albert packing, while crippling Kida. I summed up: against different players you might suspect two pair or a set, but those two have a lot of gamble in 'em.

My takeaway from the Sunday tourney was the incredible asswhipping I took when it got down to Shawna and I heads-up. Jefferson watched the carnage.

It started well enough, her with a moderate chip lead on me. I doubled up when I flopped such a nice draw, I just couldn't fold. After a raise and a reraise, we were all-in with my A7-spades against her Hilton Sisters, looking at a board of 8s-6s-4d. My spade hit on the turn.

I had a decent shot to bust her shortly after that, but her ace-high was good enough against my KQ offsuit.

The rest was car-wreck ugly.

I lost momentum. Confidence. My cards weren't cooperating, and I didn't have the balls to play my opponent while paying less attention to my cards. Shawna thoroughly outplayed me for a good twenty minutes. I was way too slow to react to what she was doing (betting and raising!). Next time, for instance, I'm gonna raise from the big blind at least half the time that she limps on her button. I was doing way too much calling, and I need to cut that out against a good player like Shawna.

My selective memory is blocking out the hand during which she regained the chip lead. She ended the tourney holding pocket aces against my J3-hearts. She sprung her trap with a big overbet on the river, and had the board not paired fives, my jacks and threes would've been best. No sour grapes though - I had no business winning this tourney.

$25 in, $50 out.

~~

I've been mulling over something I'll probably try. In my $10 buy-in cash game, I've got this dumb/crazy idea that I should attempt to go the whole night with three options: bet, raise, fold. No calling. None.

It'll probably cost me money that night, but it seems like an interesting exercise. And it might disturb the rest of the table, which would be good for a laugh or two.

~~

And Albert is going to Vegas, and he's going to give the single-table sats a shot, to play his way into the WSOP Event #2 (joining the PCS's Tim and several badass bloggers). I'm pretty sure he's going to be buying his way in if he doesn't make it from a satellite.

I'm psyched for all of you WSOP'ers. Good luck. Knock 'em dead, and knock 'em out!