Third

Well I had a decent game last night. It was pretty scary at first as when we came back from break I was down to 2,000 and the blinds were 100/200. I got quite lucky and was getting some decent cards along with some aggressive play and I managed to build my stack enough to get in site of the final table. Too bad the cards went so damn cold on me before the final table started; I sat down at the final with only 11,000 in chips and blinds at 1,000/2,000.

I only got to see a couple of flops before I was down to 8,000 and had to post my bb. I looked down and there was 55 looking back at me. There was on caller and then the big stack went all in against me. Since the blinds were about to go up, effectively dropping my M to one, I called—he is known for playing bs when he has a stack. He had pocket fours against my fives, and imagine my shock when I hit quads on the flop. Thanks to that I managed to keep myself going till I busted out in third.

With that finish I have plenty of points for the monthly game and it also put me into eighth place overall in the running totals, but not by much. I’ll be slugging it out with a couple of my good friends as we all struggle to make (or stay in) the top nine, which wraps up at the end of August. In September they hold the “Second Chance” tourney for those who did not qualify for the six month tourney (can you say poker cruise to Mexico in December) at which time there is the “Best of the Best” tourney for the top nine for a trip to Vegas.

I can remember last year when I started playing with this group in December. They were already half way through the September to February six month period and I actually managed to make it into the six-month game in that time. The six-month game is a two-day deep stack tourney and I actually made it about half way through day two. Personally I was quite proud of that as I had only been playing cards for less than six months. It still astounds me that with less than a year’s worth of experience, I am in the top nine of 700+ players, and all of the ones at the top have been playing for 5,10, 20 or more years.

Several of the players now know what my typical ranges are. I have been starting to use this to my advantage whenever I can to pull off the occasional bluff. It has been working out pretty well because in the past two and a half weeks I have only been busted out before the last two tables once, and sadly have had about seven bubbles. Now that I am playing the people at the table rather than just my cards, it has been giving me some help. Now if I can just get a bit better at putting them on a hand I should be able to go much further and give my game a nice boost.