20th

Last night I played in one of the MTT’s on PokerStars and went out in 20th of 1,596. I was playing a good game, had my ups and downs but the hand that took me out almost made me puke. I had KcTc in the SB and called. The flop had a K and two clubs and the BB, who was short stacked, pushed. The chip leader at our table called, as did I. The turn gave me a T for two pair and I bet and was called by the stack. River put down a 2c and I bet 25k. The big stack pushed and I called. He showed AcJc and both me and the BB were sent to the rail, and the big stack of our table was now the big stack in the tourney (I had been in 5th).

I told my friend, MsJoanne, about this and she asked if I had been worried about the Ace. All I could say was, no, not really. I had to look at it this way, of the 13 clubs in the deck, five of them are out, and only one of them could beat me. He would also have to have two clubs, one of which had to be the Ace in order for him to win. If I had laid it down my M would have been about 3 or less, but the next level blinds would have me pushing every hand. If I won, I would have been the tourney chip leader with around 425,000 or so, but instead the other guy now had around 465,000. With only one card in the deck that could beat me, the only foolish thing to do was fold. I’m pretty sure any flush would be calling or pushing. In fact, if he had re-raised me, I would have pushed (course his re-raise would have left me with no choice for all intents and purposes).

Other than that, things went quite well and I think I played some good cards. I made a bad call or two, a bad fold or two, other than that I was playing some good selective-aggressive poker. The scariest part was after the second break when the cards just refused to work with me. I went two blind levels with only one pot each and didn’t see more than six flops between those two levels. A few times late in the game I had a rollercoaster ride of 100,000 down to 35,000 and back up, three times in all if I remember correctly, until I hit 178,000 and pretty much stayed there until the end no too long after.

To date, this was my deepest finish in a MTT, and the first time where I really had a good shot of making the final table, or taking it down for that matter. I can only hope that one day the poker gods will smile upon me once again and allow me to make it even deeper. Then again, it might be because all I drank was water this time and left the booze on the shelf….