A Cool Night

I had a nice run in a few tournaments last night: something like 24th out of 800 in a $33 on PartyPoker; 100th out of 503 (out of the money) in Party $109; and 6th out of 705 in UB's Sunday night $200 (my 2nd best cash ever).

It's funny, out of all three tournaments, I thought I played best in the Party $109 that I didn't cash in. I had built a nice stack when I picked up AA. I raised 4.5 times the large BB and a donkey bigger stack (only about 20% more) went all-in with 77. Of course I called and he hit a 7. I also had a legit shot at the final table in the huge $33 on Party but lost a few coin flips at the end to finish with a good cash. I wish I knew how to get more details on my results at Party. The tournaments scroll off so fast that I didn't get the exact numbers.

The big result, of course, was the 6th place finish in the UB $200. My previous biggest cash was a 4th place in the same tournament. In this tournament, I didn't win ONE SINGLE COIN FLIP!

Okay, maybe that's not exactly accurate. All of you that railed me can stop laughing. ;-0

The truth is I was really happy with my play for the first couple of hours. No hands stand out in my very tired head. No huge suckouts or terrible bad beats (but I am sleep deprived and it's blurry -- and don't have the hand history yet from UB). Just some good play and enough good cards to get me that far. When we finally got to the final 100 (top 80 pay), I didn't get the right opportunities and all of the sudden I'm in bubble play. I would say for the next 50 spots, except for an occassional jump up here or there, I was near the bottom five in the tournament. Did I win races: you betcha. Over and over again. So I had a couple of hours of good play followed but a lot of LUCKY play. That's a good combination.

During this time, the rail was hysterical. The last time I did so well in the $200 there were a bunch of big time haters railing me and it took some of the fun out of it. No haters this time and the rail was great for me and a few others at the table. It didn't just create some good karma for my races, but I think it affected play just a little bit on the table. I got a walk, for example, when I was on fumes that didn't make sense at all. Cool. It was funny when I had to race with say AQ vs 88 and five people are speed typing A,A,A,A,A,A,A. Or if I go all-in and 7 people type: "GL mindwise" ... Thanks guys!

Then brsavage, TheBeat, and the chip leader finally moved to my table and things got a whole lot tougher. With 25 to go, I hit a legitimate rush and pushed up to 50k then to 150k. I went to the final table tied with TheBeat for 2nd in chips.

The final table was designed to keep me tight. The chip leader, DaJokerz, who went on to win tournament was up 4 to 1 on everyone else -- and he was sitting to my immediate right. He was exaclty right in his aggression -- always picking his spots and picking up one or two hands per round -- very nice sir.

TheBeat, a top pro, was two to my left. Bascially, it was DaJokerz with a huge stack and everyone else in the 120k to 180k range. Blinds quickly went to $5k/$10k so if you did a normal preflop raise to $30k ro $40k, you had to very much be ready to defend for your tournament against any re-raise. The table was tight too and this saved me. I took the blinds 6 or 7 times without being challenged. Twice I had AK and would have certainly gone all-in if re-raised. But the other times I had hands like 88 or KQ and am not sure what I would have done. During this run I folded 33 twice and 44 once because there were big bets on the board (actually I folded 33 in early position once). Mostly the cards made it easy to fold.

With the blinds so high (they were because it took forever to get from the final 20 to final 10), it was really a shock it took so long to lose players. Every low stack won their races. After an hour, it was the chip leader and TheBeat ahead, and the rest of us in the 100k to 180k range. Only one player had gone out.

Finally, we're down to 6 and I misplay two hands that I'm kicking myself for. TheBeat and just taken someone out and had a lot of chips. He was now to my immediate left. It folds to me on the button and I raise 30k or 35k with with KJ. He calls and the flop misses and he takes the pot away from me. The very next hand I get AQ suited. I'm down to $130k. The chip leader makes it 50k and I flat call (blinds were proably 7k/14k at this point). This is silly. I should have simply gone all-in or folded. Anything else is a mistake. A king flops and I fold to his bet.

I am able to survive a round and finally pick up JJ. Big stack again bets out and I go all-in and he flips Q 10 and hits the Q. If I win that, I have a shot at 4th.

Thanks again all!

Some great play over the weekend: classyploppy continues to impress with several more cashes (plus he got 11th out of 2688 in the PokerStars Million over the weekend -- sheets also went very deep in this one). Nice job to miko77q, kristen, and shaw rice with final table runs in the UB $500 yesterday. Miko and kristen had other $100 cashes over the weekend and Shaw Rice, formerly westtexasman, has been crushing lately, including a number of WSOP seat wins. Also, nice cashes from AngryTeeTee, doublelucky (a win on Saturday), psp1, and Texas Troll.

Good luck this week.