First Final Table

I finally made my first final table since starting over. I played in the $17,5000 guarantee on Full Tilt on Thursday. It was a decent tournament with some pretty good players. However, there were quite a few very loose players who would call re-raises with some very weak hands out of position. But for the most part, it was a good tournament.

I got my hands on a few chips early, and by the fourth level I had around 6,000. So I was sitting pretty with the blinds pretty small. It gave me more leverage and a chance to steal the blinds a little more liberally. In the middle stage of the tournament, a key hand came up. I got moved to a very loose table. This table was the epitome of loose. Every hand was being raised and re-raised. And for the most part, the players were showing some very weak hands down. A very loose player opened the pot with a raise, and I looked down with 88. Against a tight opponent, it would be a marginal call. However, I knew this player was very loose and a re-raise would probably get him to fold and give me the pot right there. The blinds were 3000/6000, and he opened for 18000. I re-raised to 45000 with about 50000 left. The guy on the button re-raised all in and the small blind called. Thank god I had been paying attention to the table and knew that these two had been going at it for a while and they were both quite loose themselves. With only 50000 left, I was pretty much pot committed, especially since there was way too much in the middle to fold. So I called as well. I had 88, the re-raiser had A8 and the caller had KQ off. Nothing bigger than a 9 hit the board and I more than tripled up. I was sitting second in the tourney with 22 players left.

From there, I was pretty much cruising along. We got down to about 12 players left when I took a beat to a three outer. I had AQ in the small blind in a limped pot. The early limper was a tight passive player, and was known to limp raise with AA and KK. So I just wanted to see the flop instead of trying to play two card chicken with AQ. The flop was perfect for my hand QQ10. There were two spades, so I wanted to find out if there were any draws. I bet about 2/3 of the pot, and the early limper called. The 8 of spades came on the turn, and the early limper only had about 77,000 left and there was 96,000 in the pot. So I decided to bet enough to put him all in. He went in the tank and typed in, "Did you bet on the come?" I knew I had him when he typed that in. I said nothing, and with only a couple seconds left, he called off the rest of his money with KQ off. He didn't even have a spade in his hand. So that dropped me down to about 6th place.

For the rest of the tournament I played pretty well. I made one mistake with 10's in early position that left me short stacked at the final table. I went out in 7th place. All in all, I'm happy with the way I played and was just happy to have finally made a decent score since I started my journey. I have one token left, and will probably play it some time at the beginning of next week. To recap, in the four tournaments I have played so far, I have made the final table once and have finished in at least the top 25% each time. I am quite proud of that, especially since two of those tourneys I couldn't buy a hand to save my life.

Well, I leave you with that. In my next blog, I'll begin the lesson plan. As always, if there are any questions, or comments, drop me a line. Good luck at the table.