Some decent tournament success.

Since Friday I have played about 10 low buy in tournaments and cashed or placed in 8 of them. I’m having a pretty good run.

It started Friday night was I decided to play another one of the $1 NLHE tourneys on Stars. I doubled up a couple of times early and got to be sitting pretty good. I started playing a $3 NLHE tourney about an hour after I started the $1 and played them simultaneously. There were 997 entries in the $1 and 1457 entries in the $3. After about 3 or 4 hours of play I got crippled in both of them with my AQ. I wound up placing 20^th out of 997 in the $1 and 100^th out of 1457 in the $3. I’ll have to admit that I was tilted pretty bad after getting sucked out on in the $1 with my AQ and I should have focused a lot more on the $3 tourney instead of letting another AQ get shell shocked. 1^st place in the $3 paid $1K so that would have been a VERY nice pay day.

On to Saturday. I went over to a friends house that morning and played a game of HORSE for micro limits $.10/.50 spread. I have never played Razz or Stud8 before so this was a fun learning experience. I didn’t fair to bad by breaking even for the 4 hour session.

Sunday I decided to play some more low buy-ins on stars. I played a couple of the $1 + .20 5 table SnG’s and took some beats early to get put out. I wound up besting 44 other players in the 3^rd one to take it down. I then played a $5 + .50 one table NLHE tourney and took down 2^nd. 

Later that night I decided to use my free roll into step one on party. So we get underway and right off the bat I can tell it’s going to be a good one. I’ve noticed lately that most of the step tournaments have kind of tightened up and it’s been a challenge to coast into the retry level. This one on the other hand has had two all ins in the first level. Yum yum. The player to my direct left has started playing almost every hand and raising on the flop. Can you say TRAP!! I started trying to play some good drawing hands and waiting until I hit a flop pretty good. I finally did just that and wound up doubling up through him. We then got down to 6 players and then there was a 3 way all in. One of the all ins had total crap like a 5,2 or something and win they hit two pair on the turn and river and took down the $2500 pot they stated that they just wanted to take 6^th and get the $4. I then proceeded to provoke the same player into calling my all in when I had an AK and I knocked them out, putting me in great shape to take it down. I then did just that and won my entry into step 2.

I played the 2^nd step right after that and did fairly well but went out in 3^rd placed. Oh well, I had a great time in the tournaments this weekend and fared pretty well. I did have a hand in the $1 5 table on stars that will stick with me for a long time to come.  I was in the big blind with  a 42o and got to see the flop un-raised with 3 others. The flop came out 5,4,2 giving me two pair. The sb checked I bet the min $75 everyone called. I was thinking at the time, I should be worried about someone holding an A,3 for the straight, then another 4 peeled off on the turn. Giving me the boat. SB checks, another check, and I once again bet the min $75. Call, button raises to $150, sb re-raises to $250, I re-raise to $500. Fold all-in, raise-all-in, and I call. The small did indeed have the straight but didn’t bet when that was the nuts, and I wound up taking down a very large pot. That was probably the pot that won it for me.

 

Pineapple, what's that?

Well, we were playing a little pick up game after a cookout over the holiday weekend. Who would have thought I would win my largest pot in a home game that night. We were playing $.25/.50 NL games and this hand was pineapple. It was down to three handed and I was on the button with AcAhTc. I raised it to $1.50 the sb called and the bb raised all in to $10.50. We the had a small discussion on when our hole cards would be revealed if I called his all in; whether it be before the discard was made or after. Seeing how this would give me an incredible advantage to see what card he was going to discard and thus what type of hand he was going to be drawing to before I had to discard. It was decided that we would not show our hands until after the flop and the discard were made. All this time I was seriously not expecting the SB to call his all in raise. I called and surprisingly the sb called as well. By now there is $31.50 in the pot, and I have another $34 in front of me and the sb has about $30 in front of him. The flop comes out As, 5s, 9h and I discard and slowly push my remaining stack to the middle while muttering “all in”. The SB does the unthinkable and calls. After they both discarded and tabled their cards, the original all in bet held 88 and the SB had a flush draw. The turn brought an 8 and the river was a blank for both of them, giving me the $91.50 pot and ending the game. That was definitely the largest cash home game pot that I have taken down.