Like rain on a hot summer day

As I noted in a previous post, I wanted to start playing tourneys again motivated by the recent big wins of local players. But as usual my schedule was not allowing me much of anything. I think I played 2 tourneys from that time and that's pretty much it.

I don't remember too much of the details but I know I quickly busted out in those 2 tourneys. One was a $20+2 buyin, the other a $30+3. Getting back to the tournament groove after playing purely SNGs for a good couple of months was turning out harder than I expected.

Well, that was until Sunday. For the first time in a long long while, I had the Sunday afternoon off. So for kicks, I registered for a $5+0.50 buy in $500 added tourney over at Pokerroom. 630+ players joined so prize pool was around $3,700, top 70 got paid. I usually don't like joining these kinds of tourneys as the number of players was just too much for the free time that I had.

But what the heck, I wasn't doing anything and I needed the practice. I played my usual tight game, looking for spots to steal. Doubled up with 33 against AQ. Then back to tight again.

I then got AA with about half of the field gone. Lots of small stacks. Somebody goes all in, somebody calls. I go over the top and that was enough to coast me to the money.

With about 50 left, I was pretty much low stack but was happy to make it to the money although 41-50 was only around 4x my buy-in. My M was already in the 6 to 8 range when I get A3 suited diamonds in middle position.

Shoot, let's take a chance. I go all in hoping for the steal. And I get two callers. Fuucking Sheeeeit. First Caller shows AK. Second Guy shows 99. Well, I was pretty much drawing dead. But surprise surprise. Flop was K rag rag with 2 diamonds. I was chanting "diamonds, diamonds" as the turn came. Blank. River was the lovely 7 of diamonds. Yahahahah !! Guy with AK was cursing me. Calling me a fish and other nasty poker names. Blamed the poker site for cheating and on and on. I pushed, he called with a better hand. Nobody made a bad decision. It was just the poker gods favoring me that day. And besides, its $5.50 dude.

That triple-up was enough to get me to top 10 playing my usual game. Don't remember much of the final table details. I just played it the way I would play an SNG. I knew that I stole a lot as the table was tight.

When the smoke cleared, I finished 2nd for a cool $550. Nothing big but not too shabby either. First was $900, but the chip leader got 5 times my chips when we went heads up. I doubled up once. Then pushed with K4. He called with KQ and that was it.

Hard to describe the feeling of finishing 2nd out of 600 plus after not playing tourneys for a while. The picture says it better. =)