Sunday morning I wake up. I feel it in my blood, I need to play a real tournament. It's been almost a month since. I check the wallet, get in the car and make my way to Golden West Casino.
I buy into the 2:15pm No-Limit Texas hold'em $45 tournament, while looking around the room I realize my table is chock full of some of the best players in town. Juan De La Cruz is to the left, Lavender next to him. Egads, I got my work cut out for me.
After a solid hour of playing very few hands, I'm down to 60% of my starting stack. Then I get dealt aces. Make it 4 BB on the button to go, three callers. If there's anything I hate about having aces, it's having more than two callers pre-flop. Flop comes Q-8-5, check check check to me, I make it 4 BB to go again, fold call, re-raise. Hmmm, looks like a set was hit, I fold my aces face up, table shits bricks.
Folding those aces was a huge asset to my table image because since it happened, people were staying away from my raises, and defiantly away from my all-ins. By the second break (2 hour mark) I had just about three times my original stack. A lot of this was due to being dealt AK about 3 times in one orbit.
Smooth sailing as the tables begin to break, now down to four, blinds fairly huge (1000-2000). I built my stack up to 32k with a lot of small ball poker. Table image can mean life of death in some games. As we inch closer to three tables left, I notice everybody has a decent sized stack in front of them and the field is getting rougher.
I decide to go full stone at this point. We broke it down to two tables, only 20 people left, 10 to final table. You weren't getting a single chip outta me unless you were a blind! I catch pocket jacks in BB, raise a person all in, they call and scoop it up to 40k. This is always my favorite part of the tournament, only nine places were getting paid, there were 18 of us left and everyone was sweating hard. But to me, this is ample opportunity to steal some blinds from large stacks who didn't want to play in their blinds, thank you!
One by one they drop and oddly enough to the same guy, at least my table. This gentleman was just calling everybody down and eliminating them, he had well over half the chips in play. I knew he was going to be at the final table, but I also felt he was going to be one of the first to be eliminated, he played too carelessly with a large stack.
So there we were, the last ten. One chip leading maniac, about 6 solid above-average players, a rooster, and a below average player.
What happened next was the craziest final table I have ever played..
Every hand dealt became and all-in. Except, the person who was short stacked in the all-in won, every time. We had 6 all-in's called and not a single person eliminated. What did that mean? The stacks were evening out.
After an hour and a half of balls-out poker, nobody was still eliminated! Then finally we lose a player to some weird A9o vs K10s showdown that gives the victory to the latter. Were in the money now, excellent. that's when I start making mistakes, I kept limping to just be raised all-in what seemed like six times in a row. Frustrated and down to only to two BB and a half, I push under the gun with AJo, no callers and scoop blinds. next hand, AJs again, all-in no callers scoop blinds. Next hand QQ, I move all-in and get called by the chip leader, he has A9. The board is blanks, and within three hands I go from short stack to chip leader (keep in mind the blinds were 5000-10000 with a 2000 ante). Two hands later, that same guy who doubled me up is now out in ninth place. I knew he was going to blow that big stack, also he was drunk.
Another half hour goes by, no eliminations. Then they came in a giant wave, a four way all in, largest stack winning. Down to four players left. I was still chip leader, I looked at the info screen, chop was $700. I ask everybody if they wanna chop since it was second place money for everybody, all but one say yes, he eyeballs my stack, looks at his and says, "Nah, lets play another blind." I knew what he was up to, he took me for a fool who will blow his chip lead four handed when the blinds were outrageous. What I did next made me proud, and him very very mad. I folded every hand without looking, over and over, while I watched him get raised out of his own blinds. He eventually figured this was going nowhere and decided to chop after 4 minutes into the new blind.
$700 a piece, now thats good stuff.
I went home to immediately setup my usual Sunday poker game. We had 6 players at $20 with a couple re-buys. After two hours it was down to me and Brittany. We played heads-up for two more hours (a record for me as far as heads-up) until I finally took it down. Damn 12 straight hours of poker made me $840.
Looks like im back, just in time too. My birthday is in 8 days, and it's being spent in Vegas....
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