Tournament on 7-14-04

My schedule was a little tight as I need to find a way to pick up my dog Penny from the vet after her surgery. So I went to casino at 3:00 PM and hopped on an open 3-6 table to kill some time for an hour. They didn't start selling entries into the 7:00 PM tournament until 4:00 PM.

Again I went on another mad rush and won the first 3 hands I was dealt and I think 5 of the first 8. I quickly doubled my $100 buy in. I even flopped a nut flush one time and let another guy do all the betting for me, until I raised him on the river. Any ways I ended up $138 at 4:00 PM and went and used my profits to buy my tournament entry.

I ran over to Banfield and picked up Penny. Poor girl, she looked like the bride of Frankenstein with a 3 inch scar on her forehead and all the fur shaved off her forehead as well. As I was putting her in the truck, I blew out my slacks in the back so I guess it's time to go shopping for some new work slacks.

I barely got back to the casino for the start at 7:00 PM. I think I missed one or two hands. My immediate concern was to calm down and try to gauge the atmosphere at the table. I didn't see a lot of good players at the table, but I did see some calling stations so I knew that bluffing was probably not a good idea. Sure enough I saw someone go all in with K-2o on a pure bluff and get called by someone else with a mediocre hand. Before I knew it, 2 players had busted out before the blinds had even got to me.

I won a couple of hands early and I think I was up to $2400-$2600 when they broke up our table.

The next table was definitely tougher. I could not get any decent cards to start with. I wanted to focus on stealing at least one blind per rotation but I didn't want to bet 3 times the big blind when it moved up to 100 or 200 without at least the possibility of making a hand if I am called. The times I had the hand to steal, someone was in the pot before me. The times it was folded to me on the button, I had to fold because the player on my left seemed pretty good and not afraid to defend his blind. So I was trying to wait for a good hand and was getting blinded off.

One hand I remember was that I had AK and raised all in preflop to try and take the blinds and a someone who had just made a standard raise. He called and also turned up AK. So all we did was split the blinds.

Another time, I had AQ of diamonds and as I was getting ready to raise and hopefully double up, the girl on my right made a big bet. It would have put me all in and I still had enough of a stack to wait. I dropped an f-bomb while I thought about it. I folded, and another guy who had put in a decent bet folded. He had AK and she claims she had KK. Good laydown.

Finally I put my last $900 in with A-10 and got called twice. One guy had 99 and the girl had KQ and was all in as well. Well a King hit on the turn and I was done.

I think I was around 70th place. I feel like I played well but I just didn't have anything to work with. I feel like I may have wimped out on trying to bluff out some blinds, but there was a better than average chance that they would have called since there really seemed to be a lot of calling stations. I can't feel too bad though because I won my entry fee again. As long as I keep doing that I am sure I will show a profit before the year ends.