Suddenly My Luck Takes A Turn

After my last post, I was very frustrated with my bad tournament luck. I was not sure if I could get any poker in on Sunday after the earlier debacle, but Jake went to bed and Michele decided to do some housecleaning so I was left alone.

I logged back into Full Tilt looking for any kind of satellites to the 150 seat guarantee for the Main Event. The tournament will take place on Father’s Day this Sunday and I already told Michele that my Father’s Day gift can be leaving me alone all day Sunday to watch the final round of the US Open Golf Tournament and play in the final big Main Event Satellites. The Full Tilt tournament will cost $535 to enter and I don’t like the thought of paying full price.

I signed up for the $11 rebuy satellite and the $75 satellite. I ran really well in both. Here is a summary.

Rebuy.

There were only 4 spots available and we only started with 1500 in chips. I lost half my stack after I picked up JJ and had to fold to a raise on the flop after an Ace hit. I rebought once even though I was not broke to give myself some chips in case some other over aggressive donkey wanted to get it all in with bottom pair.

Sure enough, I went on a sick run of cards. KK double up, QQ vs AJ and double up again. I get pocket Jacks and flop a set. Better yet, my opponent flops a set of 8’s and goes broke. Then I pick up KQ and flop bottom two pair and improve to a full house by the river. Suddenly have over 12,000 in chips and I’m the chip leader.

I have been reading Gus Hansen’s new book and he mentioned how much more aggressive he plays when the antes kick in. I had never really put it together before, but it makes perfect sense. If the blinds are 500-1000 and you raise to 3000, then you are betting 3000 to win 1500. You need to win more than 67% of the time to be successful. But add in a $100 ante and now it’s 3000 to win 2400. Now you only have to win a little over half the time to break even. What is weirder is that players tend to tighten up more when the antes kick in because their stacks are shorter and they only want to play premium hands.

I took advantage of my bigger stack and tried to steal more. For the most part it worked great. I made it to the final table and had a decent stack. Unfortunatley I ran my Aces into Ace-Ten and my opponent made a straight to knock me out before I qualified for the satellite. I did win $39 so I booked a small profit for my time.

While this tournament was going on, I was also playing the $75 satellite. I was also catching good cards to build a stack. I even survived a bad beat when my Aces lost all in preflop to pocket 8’s when my opponent rivered a 4 card flush. That brought me down from 3470 to 2400.

Later I picked up Aces again and won an all in pot. I picked up AQ and flopped A-Q-Q with an Ace on the river for good measure.

It was one of those great tournaments where every time I stole or pushed all in, I was not called. I don’t know if my skill is any better on picking my spots, or I was just lucky that no one woke up with a hand.

I made it to the final table as the chip leader, although my lead was small. They were giving away 5 seats so I wasn’t interested in getting too involved in any hands without a premium holding.

To my chagrin, everyone else seemed to play pretty well as there were very few flops and a lot of stealing going on. I raised ATo under the gun and was reraised all in and had to let it go. That put me in the 10BB range which meant that I was going to have to steal occasionally to survive. I managed to win all my small blind vs. big blind steals to stay alive. With 6 left, two players went all in and I thought I was set. I don’t care who wins the hand as they had equal stacks. Then the poker gods decided to have a sense of humor and a five card flush came on the board with neither one of the players holding a card of the same suit. It’s a tie and everyone is still playing!

A little while later someone finally went bust and I won my $535 seat. Now I need to figure out how to satellite in cheap for the Poker Stars tournament on the same day and I’ll have all my bases covered.