When I woke up on Monday morning I was excited because I knew I was going to get some tournament play in today. I was up a couple hundred for the trip, and was hoping to play in the Bellagio’s daily deep stack tournament. During the week they offer a $330 tournament that starts at 2pm. Starting at 9am they offer satellite tournaments, and the satellite for the $330 tourney cost $90. Each satellite is a 10-person tournament, with the top two finishers receiving a tournament entry and $40 cash. Adam and I got some breakfast, then we made our way over to the poker room to get in a satellite.
The satellite structures aren’t too bad. You start with 2500 chips. Levels are 15 minutes and the blinds start at 25/50. Unless you try to play every hand you should have some chips with which to maneuver for a while. Our table put that to the ultimate test. We started our satellite around 12:30pm, and at 1:30 we still hadn’t eliminated a single player. This was getting the poker room tournament director concerned since the tournament for which we were trying to win seats began in 30 minutes. Well, blinds being what they were players started dropping like flies about 15 minutes to start time of the daily tournament. I went out in 5th, and I went to the window and bought my way in to the tournament for the full $330. Adam managed to hang on for 2nd and received a satellite seat.
For the daily tournament, you start with 10k in chips. Levels are 35 minutes, and the blinds start at 25/50, so you’ve got plenty of room even take a bad beat if it happens early enough. I decided to put this to the test three hands in to the tournament. It wasn’t done intentionally, but here’s how it went down. There were a couple people that limped in to the pot, but an older gentleman in the cutoff position raised it up to 275. When it got to me in the small blind I looked down and saw K-K. Now, knowing that I am going to have to play the rest of the hand out of position I decided that I wanted to win this hand right here right now so I put in a reraise to 825 chips. The big blind and all the limpers folded, and now the action was on the initial raiser. He calls almost immediately. The board flopped:
J-J-8
Obviously I don’t like the Jack, but I’m not putting my opponent on a hand like Ace-Jack or King-Jack here, so I decided to lead out with a bet for 1300 chips. My opponent calls. The turn card was an Ace. So now I really don’t like the board, but once again I just wasn’t putting my opponent on Ace-King or Ace-Queen either since he called the flop. This time I wanted to exercise some pot control and decided to check. My opponent bet 1500 back at me. I thought about it, but since I wasn’t putting him on the hands I’ve mentioned I thought he might be trying to take advantage of my “sign of weakness” when I checked so I decided to call. I didn’t put him on pocket Aces either because I didn’t think anyone would bet the big full house there. The river was a “4”. I knew that this couldn’t possibly have helped my opponent, but I was also content with trying to check this down at this point so I checked to him. He bets 3300. I still wasn’t putting him on any hands that I thought would have called me preflop or called on the flop (AA, AK, AQ, AJ, KJ). I called and was shown Queen-Jack. Ugh…ay ay ay…Now I’m down to 3075 chips three hands in to this tournament. Oh goody.
Well, losing 70% of my stack wasn’t part of the plan, but now that I’m there I ain’t gonna just mail it in. The blinds were still 25/50, so I still had plenty of chips to afford blinds. In the next level the blinds went to 50/100, but I still had enough chips to play without feeling as though I had to push. I picked up 5h-3h on the button in a pot where 5 people limped in front of me so I called. The player to act immediately after me, the small blind, made it 350 to go, and almost all the limpers called so I did, too. The flop was:
6-2-3
giving me the bottom pair and a gutshot to the straight. It’s not a bad flop for me. It’s not one I’m SUPER excited about, but when the preflop raiser bet only 500 and everyone else folded, I liked my hand a whole lot more. After all, if the preflop raiser missed, I'm good. If I'm not good, I've got the 3's for trips, the 5's for two-pair, or the 4 for the straight to nab the lead in the hand. I decided to call and the turn was a great card for me: the “4” giving me the straight. My opponent bet 2000, and since I only had 2075 I moved all in and was called immediately. I showed my hand, and my opponent mucked even before the river was dealt. I’m guessing he had an overpair and was drawing to the chop. Since he mucked I asked the dealer to not deal the river card because I didn’t want to get “unlucky” and have the straight get put on the board and then have to call the floor person over to determine if I should get the whole pot. In case you are unaware, to win at a showdown in a Hold ‘em game in MOST (and when I say most I mean every casino I’ve ever played in) casinos you must show both your hole cards, regardless of them being used or not in your hand. Since he mucked, the hand was over.
So, now I more than doubled up and was sitting at about 7100 chips. With the blinds as they were it was no problem to start mixing it up again. Over the next two hours I managed to work my stack to about 20k in chips, which at that time was about 5k over the average. I was able to do all this without ever being all in and at risk (when I was all in earlier I wasn’t really at risk because I had the straight so I don’t count that). To give you an idea of how deep-stacked this tournament is in the first 3½ hours of play we only lost 16 of the 57 players in the tournament.
It was at this point in the tournament that players seemed to start dropping pretty quickly. I managed to stay out of most of the action, and was able to pick up a couple of decent pots with some preflop reraises. By the time we hit the next break I was at just over 40k in chips. It was at this point that I started picking up some real good hands. I kept getting dealt Q-Q. By no means do I consider Q-Q uncrackable, but when you get it dealt to you five times in an hour and a half you are usually going to pick up a lot of chips. As we closed in on the Final Table I found myself to the immediate right of the player who had crippled me early in the tournament. I was able to exact my revenge when I took my Q-J and was able to limp preflop with several other players. The Jack-8-2 flop provided no real concern to me so I bet, and when this player on my left went all in I was able to call (his stack wasn’t that large anymore, go figure). He turned over King-8 for second pair and the board bricked out for him so I was able to eliminate my early tournament tormentor. :)
Shortly after that, I managed to lose about 15k in chips when I raised from late position in an attempt to pick up the blinds while holding King-Ten. I had been very successful in picking up blinds because of my stack size, but this time one of the blinds reraised all in. Unfortunately, the call was a no-brainer, and the guy even asked me “Do you have
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