Back to the Felt

After some fun in the sun and all kinds of hassles with my business, CEU.com, which we are trying to sell (more later), I'm back blogging. The way it is suppose to be. Not only that, but I'm going to talk about what we all love - poker. Live-in-the-moment Poker!

It was great to be back in live tournament play. I played two events at Foxwoods and I thought I might be a bit rusty since I haven't been in a real event for about five months.

So first I enter the $340 event which attracts 1093 entries. For the first six hours, I got very poor cards and worked hard to tread water. The longer I could survive with crap hands, the better chance I'll have when the mother load of starting cards comes in. At one point my 15,000 starting stack was down to under 4000. I skanked my way back up to 9000 or so when I went on a mini-rush. I get pocket aces and made a standard 3X raise. I got one caller. An old guy with a lot of chips who didn't seem to know what he was doing (I just moved to the table). It was gift time when the flop came out 6-6-A. He checks. I check. Turn puts 2 diamonds out there. He bets 3,000. I call. Diamond on river. He goes all in with his flush and I, of course, call. When you get situations like that, you can see why making big, strategic lay downs is important (more on that and plenty more on my courses). I got two more courtesy double ups. Another weak player goes all in for 15X. I have AA again. He has 8-8. (I would feel his pain later.) A few hands later, I'm peeling back one ace and I hear; "I'm all in." The woman had over $100,000. I peeled back another ace. "I call." She had A-4 of hearts. The flop brought a 3 and a 2. The turn brought a second heart. It's never easy. But I won and was now table chip leader.

I cruised into the money. Picked up a lot of chips around the bubble. Now we were down to two tables. I had about $420,000 in chips. Just before a break I get 4-4 in the cutoff. The BB is $30,000. I raise to $100,000. The SB goes all in for another $120,000 to me. This was a sucky position. I knew I had to call. He was getting low and would certainly push with A - (any high card). So I figured I was a slight favorite. And I couldn't just abandon my children out there. So I called. He did indeed have AK. So I was happy, but my happiness did not last long when a K hit on the flop. Now I was short and the blinds were going up to 20K; 40K. I got my stack back up to $380,00, but we were in push or fold territory. I decided to fold 9-9 when an early "all in" was called by the guy on my right. It turned out to be AK against AJ and I would have tripled up!!! Instead I went all in with 8-8 and was called by pocket AA. I finished 14. Remember 1093 started. Cashed $2399.

I'll tell you all about the Mega Stack Challenge ($2000) next time.