I Didn't Even Want To Be In This Tournament . . .
And I Should Have Busted Out Twice(This entry crossposted to Steal The Blinds.)
Among the many tournaments hosted by Full Tilt Poker are "Guaranteed" tourneys. No matter how few people enter, they give away a guaranteed amount.
So when I logged on this morning, I discovered there were only about 45 people signed up for an 11 AM $3,500 guaranteed tourney with a $24 + $2 buy-in. The pay line started at 18th place. So, I registered for the tourney, thinking I was getting good value for such a great payout.
I should have known better. In the last 10 minutes before the tourney started, everybody and their uncle entered. By the time it started, 155 people were in, and I wished I could be out.
I wished I could unregister even more when I held Q/Q and found myself all-in against K/K. But a beautiful turn Q tripped me up and all of a sudden I was among the chip leaders.
When the moneyline approached, I was getting cold-decked. From 18 players all the way down to the final 9, I didn't see a decent hand. But at the final table I busted the two shortstacks holding A¨/J¨ and vaulted into the chip lead.
Now it was time to start thinking about the big money. With seven players left, we were all walking away with at least $139.50, but first place paid over seven times that, $1,004.40.
I almost knocked out another shortstack with pocket deuces against his J¨/6¨, but the turn 2¨ filled his flush and I couldn't find a boat on the river.
While the others got knocked out, a couple of advantageous hands put me over 100,000 chips, and I lorded my big stack over the rest of the table, stealing antes and blinds virtually at will. But eventually, the second-biggest stack caught on and reraised many of my steal attempts. Not wanting to get into a brawl with someone who could really hurt me holding mediocre cards, I usually gave it up. He did this enough to take the chip leadership from me.
With three players left (third place won $474.30, second won $632.40) and the blinds at 1200/2400 with 300 antes, I held 9§/9¨ in the big blind. The now-chip leader, in the small blind, just called me, and I raised to 8100. He called.
The flop came 5§/A§/7¨ and he fired a bet of 17,100 at me. Thinking he was merely representing the ace, I raised to 35K and he called.
The turn was 6ª and he went all-in. I figured he might now have the ace, but he'd been so aggressive I couldn't guarantee it. If he held anything besides an ace (or a pocket pair bigger than my nines), I was a massive favorite. I called.
He showed A¨/2§.
Crap.
I was already saying my goodbyes and cursing my misread when the river came 8¨ and a huge pile of chips were shoved toward me.
What the??!?
I made a straight! Probably the luckiest suckout I've ever had.
I polished him off five hands later with Q/10 when I won the coin-flip against his pocket fives. This left me heads-up with the small stack and a 9-1 chip advantage, at 209,327 versus 23,173.
With that much of an advantage, I could go all-in with any two cards, and I did a couple times and lost. But sixteen hands in, still with a better than 3-1 advantage, I pushed her all in with Aª/4ª. She called with Qª/J©.
What happened? See for yourself:
(click for full-size)
FLUSH, BABY!
And that's how you make a thousand dollars when you don't even want to be there.
Edited 9/14 2:30 AM to add the STB link.
posted by Marsh @ 4:59 PM
<< Home