Posted in poker on May 4th, 2009 by raskull
Today…. Today was a good day. I entered into a $20,000 freeroll tournament last week, and the tournament was today. The tourney was for Canadians only, and only those who had bought in on full tilt for the first time in april. When I read this the first time I thought “man… that can’t be a very big player field”. Turns out I was right, and was surprised to see only 318 entrants at the beginning of the tourney. I came late, we all started with 1500 chips and I was down to 1260.
I slowly but surely built my way up, and made the money, which was top 90 players, and paid $80. At this point I had about chip average and was feeling pretty good. I kept on building my stack until I was chip leader with over 40k in chips. At this point there were only three tables left or so and I was poised to make the final table easily.
Poker has it’s ups and downs though and I ended up swinging up and down a bit, and eventually getting down to the final table with only about 20k in chips. The chip leader had roughly 120k at that time. I ended up losing all my chip with two pair to a better two pair. I pocketed $300 which is pretty awesome, but disappointing in itself because the money on the final table is very good, with 1st place taking $3600.
Right afterwards I sat myself down at a $.50/$1 table and promptly lost my full $100 stack with a set over set. Well that sucked…
So I entered into another tourney. I bought in at a 27 player $20 +$2 sit-n-go. I was short stacked right from the beginning after losing a 3rd of my chip stack in the 1st hand I played. I was not able to make things work and ended up just barely hanging on to reach the final table. To give you an idea of just how short stacked I was.. I started the tourney with 1500 in chips, and made the final table with 620. I was very pleased to not be the bubble boy (the last person out before the money) until I realized that only the top 5 pay, not the full final table. I doubled up a couple times and felt comfortable enough to start playing my game. I worked at it and played very well, building my stack up to the chip lead with over 10k in chips. When there were only 7 of us left I took two players out in one hand to give myself a 2-1 chip lead over anyone else at the table. I said “you’re welcome fellers” to the remaining players as a joke because they had all just made the money because of the last hand. :)
When heads up started I had a huge chip lead. Something like 32k to 9k. We swung back and forth for a bit, and he eventually went all in for his last 9k. I called with a J 4 offsuit, and he hit two pair on the flop (queens and nines). I went runner runner 4′s on the turn and river to win. Even if I had doubled him up I would have still had a chip lead and I’m confident I would have won. Admittedly I got really lucky on a few hands, but that’s bound to happen in any tourney.
