Live tourney

No I am not talking about the WSOP!

I went to play at the Club de Poker Rosemont last night. Went pretty well, although I found myself short stacked. Still managed to make the final table and finished 10th out of 43.

A few interesting hands that affected my results.

Quite early on, blinds are something like 75/150 and I have an above average stack. An early position player pushes all in and is called by another player who is on an even shorter stack. Now I'm on the cutoff and action is folded to me and I look at pocket Jacks. Guess I was affected by the Phil Hellmuth mantra "it's just Jacks" cause I folded. Calling would have cost me bout 20 to 25% of my stack which would have been far from disastrous at that point and would have allowed me to pick up a really nice pot (yes my Jacks would have won. Turns out both players had really borderline hands and a Jack came on the flop). I think I just played that hand too tight. To be perfectly honest, this was still in the early stages of the tourney and I was a bit overwhelmed not being used to play live. I find there's so much more informations to take into account in live play. I have to get more live experience under my belt.

A bit later, blinds are at 100/200 if I remember correctly. Alex raises to 600 from middle position. Action is folded to me in the cutoff and I look at pocket aces. I re-raise to to 2000. The button folds but the SB pushes all in for about 1000 more. Alex folds and of course I call. I flip my ace and he then flips K-9 of clubs with a face like he's just bitten a rotten lemon. Board came K-9-T-8-4-9 breaking my aces. Now the good things about that hand is that I played it correctly and that I did not allow it to tilt me. I stayed focused and kept on playing. The bad point is that it moved me from being an above average stack to a below average stack. Still, things were going pretty well at that point, but then I hit a real shitty streak of cards and my stack got slowly whittled down.

With blinds at 400/800 I was left with around 5900 chips. Being a bit overwhelmed by live play at the start, I had been playing really tight from the get go. With less than 8 big blinds left I felt I needed to make something happen when I looked at Kh 6h under the gun. I fired 2400 in the pot right there figuring if I'm called I might be able to pick up the pot with a continuation bet. Everybody folds to the big blind who hesitates for a while and then calls. Flop comes J 9 3 with 2 clubs, no hearts. Big Blind checks. Now THIS was my chance to get out of my bluff. Why should I have done this? Well the BB was a really nice guy but I had a definite tell on him saying he was not in a gambling mood. I should have given him credit for a hand better than mine. Still, as I said I had been playing really tight sine the beginning and I guess I wanted to make a stand here and show the regulars of the club that I was a baller. I fired 2000 more into the pot. He went into the tank for quite some time, in fact another player called a clock on him, but in the end he called. That was it, I was left with too little to chase him out on the next card and at the same time I KNEW he had me beat. Turn came a 5. We both checked. River came an A and he said he was going all in. I just threw my hand away, crippled.

That last hand got people talking a lot and a few people were quite interested to know what I had. In fact some guy said he folded Queens to my original raise. Anyway, I promised the guy who got me to lay down my bluff I'd tell him what I had at the end and I did. As I said this crippled me, but at the same time it might be an investment for future tourneys.

A few hands later we got moved to the final table and I ended up in early position with less than 2 Big Blinds so it was shove or fold time. I picked up A-T for my first hand, pushed and picked up blinds and antes. Then the very next hand I pick up A5s under the gun. I push again but this time I get called by A-T and bust out.

Overall I'm pretty happy about this whole tourney. Made the final table and had lots of fun. Will try to go again next week.