Live Tourney Report - Jun 25

Small turnout for the monthly local tourney - only 26. Was not pleased with my opening table draw - one player I knew was super aggressive and not afraid to put his chips to work. None of the mistake-prone players at my table - I looked lamentfully over at them as they got ready to give their chips to someone else.

Two guys were new to the game, but gave every appearance that they knew what they were doing. When each opened a pot with a normal 3x raise, I knew that there wasn't going to be much smooth sailing.

Won a small pot early with pocket jacks. Raised up 3 limpers and chased them all away but one, then cbet a queen high board. He stayed along for the ride. Fortunately he checked the turn and river and mucked his draw or second pair.

Very little else to tell until the final table - I'm not I had a showdown. Floated down to 9-12 blinds and kept afloat with some timely aggression.

Once at the final table, things tightened up considerably as is often the case. I draw a nice seat - three shortstacks to the left and all waiting for a hand. I kept pounding. - pocket twos, king rag, all stole the blinds for me. I also had enough chips to shove over a preflop raise twice, and got folds both times. Just enough cards at the right time to stay alive.

I got my aces at a good time (is there a bad time?) - a shorty pushed over me (less than half of a 3x bet) with AT and I held up. (wasn't easy, three clubs on the flop had me fading one more). A double up would have been better, but knocking someone out wasn't bad either.

I also avoided aces twice. In the first, an under the gun player made it 2x. I knew this guy pretty well - not much of a "poker" player per se -more of a guy who waits for a big hand and then bets it. I think this might have been the second time I had ever seen him raise, and it was under the gun to boot. I looked at my big blind king-queen suited. Against most players, this would have been an easy shove or stop-and-go call - against this guy, I folded! He showed his aces to the table.

One other time, things open folded to me in the small blind and I checked out nine-deuce. Marginally good enough to shove given the situation, but I gave it a pass. The player on my left cursed a bit and flipped over his pocket rockets.

The bubble broke after a long while. The long pre-bubble had made the blinds high and most players were sitting with somewhere between 2 and 5 big blinds left. This part would go quickly. After #4 was eliminated and the blinds went up again to 2000-4000, the chip leader had less than 5 blinds left. I had less than 2. We chopped 3 ways, leaving $50 left to play for and name a winner. I was first out after that, bagging a 3rd place finish to go with my three wins and 2 seconds in this tourney.