Live tournament report
Sorry for the lack of posts the past few days, we’ve been busy with friends and family and haven’t had much time to play poker. However, last night Steve and I played in a live tournament in Cincinnati. We both did very well, I got 3rd place and Steve got 6th place. Dave Sandmann (he used to write on The Poker Blog a bit) got 7th and our other friend Mitchell got 20th. A pretty good showing for the yougest people at the tournament.
Dave, Steve, and I all made the final table, which was pretty cool. 1/3 of the final table was represented by my home game.
Anyways, the tournament was a $60 buy in with two $25 rebuys in the first hour for each player. The structure is a bit fast - and by a bit I mean blazing. Blind start at 25/50 and everyone had T$2000 to start. Not bad, but the blinds double every 20 minutes.
For the first 90 minutes I only played 2 key pots.
I played KK from early position with a strong raise to 800 with blinds at 100/200. I was actually trying to isolate a short stack that was in late position and was waiting aorund to move all in or pick up the blinds. Instead, I got another big stack to move all in on top of me after I got one caller! Fortunately I was almost positive he didn’t hold AA. Early in the tournament he smooth called preflop and on the flop with his AA and then moved all in on the turn. I would have expected a similar slow play from him if he picked up AA.
Everyone folded to me and I pushed all my chips in. I was delighted to see that I was up against 10♦10♥. The board didn’t help him and I was suddenly up to about T$5,500. It was a nice stack considering what the blinds were.
Shortly after that I picked up A♣Q♣ in early position and raised it up. The button and small blind each called. The flop was Q high and I bet out T$600, the button (a short stack) moved all in and the small blind called. I knew the button would move all in with QJ or probably something even worse. The small blind had played an absurd number of pots and probably had middle pair or worse, so I moved all in. SB had middle pair, the button had a flush draw.
The board didn’t help them and I won another big pot, bumping my chips up to T$12,000.
At the first break I was probably slightly above average with T$11,200.
After the first break I played a big hand right away with 10&spades10♥. I raised preflop, got one caller (the guy who played an abusrd number of pots) and the flop came 7♥ 8[hearts 9&spades. I had an overpair and the straight draw, so I felt pretty good.
I bet out on the flop and my opponent check raised to T$4,500. I was confused bceause I thought he had called my raise with Ax and he really hadn’t been making many bluffs. I simply called, which I decided was probably a mistake afterwards. The turn was the A♥.
So the board read 7♥ 8♥ 9&spades A♥. While I might be beat by an A I still had the flush draw. My opponent bet T$1200 (goofy bet…) and since I was getting about 1,000,000 to 1 on my money (a slight exaggeration, I know) I called him hoping to hit a heart. The river was a blank…and he CHECKED TO ME!
I checked and he showed A♦J♦. He said I “made him nervous” with my call on the turn. I didn’t bother to explain that he be T$1,200 into a pot of about $12,000 and gave me 10-1 on my money when I had a strong pair with a flush draw.
I ended up losing about half my stack on that hand and was down to $T7,200. I worked my way up to T$9,500 and then moved to a new table.
I will update this with the 2nd half of my tournament experience later. It only get more exciting - I battled back from T$4,100 with blinds at 1,000-2,000 to get third place!
Related Posts
- Lesson Learned
- Success in a Live Tournament
- In the Money: 29th of 1095 Entrants
- Quads are cheap
- Now it's time for me to be honest
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