Late Friday and busted plans means I'll probably be playing some poker online. One of the sites I play has a tournament that gets anywhere from 2200-2600 players for relatively cheap. This Friday it ended up having 2567 players. I was having some fun early, and managed to triple my starting chips in the first hour. I was fortunate enough to have one player move all-in ahead of me when I had flopped top set with no straight or flush in play yet. During the second hour of the tournament, I was moving all over the place, but then I was to start leaning on the table a little bit when I got a semi-decent hand in the Big Blind and got an awesome flop. I was holding Qd Jc with blinds at 150/300 when one player limped in and everyone else folded. The flop came:
Kh Ad Td
flopping me the nut straight. With the possible flush out there I considered betting, but decided to let my opponent have a shot at putting some chips in. He obliged by putting in about a pot sized bet. I called instead of raising, deciding to see what the turn would bring. What I didn't know was how good a hand my opponent was holding. The turn came with the 2h, putting a second flush draw now in play. I correctly guessed my opponent would make another bet at the turn, but this time he moved all-in. I called, and found my opponent holding two pair (Ks Tc), so he had 4 outs to his full house. He didn't hit, and I collected a nice pot.
I moved along from there and was able to accumulate some chips when I was in position at the table. I lost a little bit against a shorter stack when I moved all in with a set of 2's and the short stack had Kh Jh with the nut flush draw and it hit. During the third hour of the tournament the bubble passed and during the "bubble" phase, I was able to pick up 10k in chips with almost no real premium hands. I was in the money for a little while, and with 38k in chips and the blinds at 1500/3000 with a 75 chip ante, I found myself holding Ad Ks, a player in early position holding 83k in chips raised to 10k, and I decided that it was worth playing my whole stack. As long as I wasn't up against AA or KK I would be in a coin flip situation for a huge pot, and you never know, I may even have the best hand if he was holding AQ, AJ, or worse. Well, he called with his 8-8, and even though the board came Q-T-9, giving me more outs (a Jack would have given us both straights, with mine being higher), I wasn't able to catch the necessary card as the turn and river came 6-Q, and I was eliminated in 167th place. It was good enough to double my money.
I was happy with the way I played, but I really am going to have to get a little more lucky in these races if I'm going to make it deep in to a larger tournament. I have been consistently making the top 10% of the places or higher, but I'm hoping to do better at the WSOP. In this tournament up until that last hand I had gotten my chips in with the best of it. I can't see myself laying down AK in that same situation, but I really hope that I can make more correct decisions to put myself in to these types of situations when I'm out in Vegas. It did feel good to maneuver through a field that will probably be similar in size to the field I'll be playing against in the WSOP.
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