Cash in a Big Tournament

I haven't updated my blog in a while because there has not been much new and interesting in my poker play. I have been slowly building up the bankroll by playing 2 tables of 2-4 or playing 20+2 sit-n-gos. According to pokertracker I am making a ROI on the sit-n-gos of 40% and I am averaging 3 BB per 100 hands in 2-4. I have about 7000 hands in the 2-4 ring games in pokertracker so I guess that's still a relatively small sample. Still both of those stats are on the high side (according to what I have seen in other message boards).

On Saturday evening, I entered a NL Holdem tournament on Party Poker for $33. 720 total players and the top 80 make money. I managed to finish in 18th place. I had to call Michele three different times to tell her I was going to be late since I was still playing. 18th place paid $183 so I netted $150 for about 4 hours of work.

It was strange in that I don't remember too much that was interesting or strange about the tournament. For the most part I just played solid poker. I bluffed occasionally. Got caught a couple of times. The only thing that was surprising to me was how often I got away with stealing the blinds. I think at one point, I had 6 raises go uncalled before someone finally decided to see a flop against me.

The turning point was when I had about 8 times the BB left with about 25 people left in the tournament. I had AQ suited. An early player went all in and I had him covered. I went all in trying to isolate him. Unfortunately that didn't work as two more players went all in. So I am either going to be in great shape to make the final table with about 30 times the BB if I win, or I will be left with about 3 times the BB if I lose. Everyone turns over their cards and it's my AQ versus another AQ versus 77 versus AK. Wow. I kind of hate Party Poker when people are all in because they turn the cards super quick. I like the suspense of figuring out how many outs everyone has in hands like these, and Party takes all the fun out of it. Anyways I got excited when I saw a Queen hit on the river and thought I had won. Then the chips went to the guy with 77. I looked again at the board and noticed he had hit his 3rd 7 on the turn.

That was pretty much it, as I hung in there for a little while longer and finally busted out. Overall I thought it was pretty weird that I felt like I did not run into any decent players until about 40 players were left.