so close yet so far

played a pile of tournaments last night.

the 6pm $26 nlh started off crazy as i doubled up on the first hand w/ AA vs AJ on a J hi flop and just kept going from there. i believe i had close to 7k at the break. in the 2nd hour i kept on running until i picked off a short stack move-in w/ TT vs his A5. the flop came down AAx and it took a chunk of my stack. i lost another good sized pot and all of a sudden i was down to about 13 bb's. the earlier short stack was now the big stack and was playing uber laggy and calling all-ins w/ K hi on an A hi board? he made a lp raise again and i re-shipped my 88 from the sb and he made the call w/ A9s and bounced me when he paired the board.

the 7pm $75 nlh also started off really well. about 15 mins i doubled through w/ a set of 6's against QQ. i slowly kept chipping away well into the 2nd hour until i doubled through the chip leader.

i had 11k to start and chip leader had 41k in the bb.

he had played very loose in the few hands since he had moved to my table so i was pretty certain he was calling my raise in the bb.

w/ blinds at 200/400/50a i raised to 1100 from ep w/ 99. it folded around to chip leader who called.

the flop came Js7s3h and he immediately led out for pot (2850). with 9900 behind it was either push or fold. i hit the time bank even though i was pretty sure i was calling. there is no way he leads w/ a good Jack, a set or a random 2 pair as it would be a pretty standard c/r w/ those hands. i think for him to make this bet he either has to have a weak Jack, middle or bottom pair or a flush draw. the way he was trying to bully the table around it seemed pretty clear that this bet was meant to intimidate and push me out of the pot. after thinking for a couple seconds i was fairly certain that it was a flush draw and shoved.

he called and showed a King rag of spades for the flush draw and i held.

i was now sitting on a really good chip stack and was pumped that my read was right. over the next hour and a half i stayed aggressive and bobbed and weaved my way through a pretty tough field. when we got into the money i had slowly started to become short chipped but managed to make a few re-steals against one of the big stacks to stay alive. i stole and re-stole to keep my head above water and when we got down to the final two tables i was 3rd in chips w/ 112k.

when down to 16 players a big hand came up.

w/ blinds at 2k/4k/500a a fairly aggressive player shoved 42k from mp. i was in the bb w/ my 112k stack and insta-called him w/ TT. he showed QJs and i was racing for a final table stack. unfortunately the door card was a Jack and i was down to 70k.

i was whittled down to 40k at 2.5k/5k/600a w/ 13 players left. i shoved utg once w/ 55 and picked up the blinds. i shoved from lp w/ 33 and picked up that pot. down to 6 handed (12 left total) i shoved 50k utg w/ 66 and picked up the blinds again.

4th time was not a charm and i shoved 60k utg w/ 66 again and ran it into a player that called an all-in for 42k w/ 88. we both flushed and i was down to 18k w/ 5k going into the bb the very next hand.

same player i just doubled isolated me w/ A6o and i called off my remaining 13k w/ J3sooooted.
i flopped a 3, he turned a wheel and i rivered a flush to get back up to 40k.

i don't even rememeber the busto hand but i went out shortly after in 12th. i believe it was my A2 shove against A4 and he paired the 4 to send me packin but its all kind of a blurr since i was busting in the 8pm $26 at the very same time.

the 8pm went great and i had an absolute sicko stack by the 2nd hour. @ 150/300/25a i had a 26k stack! almost 100bb's deep in a online freezeout is pretty sick but the best part was there were tons of players at my table that were also deep stacked so i could bully but still play post-flop.

i pretty much did whatever i wanted and would chip up to 27 or 28k and then lose a 6k pot. chip back up and go back down. it was like this until i was getting kinda short just inside the money.

when down to 135 players (top 180 paid, over 1200 runners) i picked up AA. utg raised and i made a smallish re-raise hoping he would shove me. he did w/ JJ and i obv called. he flopped a jack and once again i was pretty much poofed. i battled for a while before going in 120 something. (i believe full tilt crashed again before this tourny finished so the bad beat might have actually saved me from going on connection tilt)

the rest of the tournies were kinda sour. i played a few satellites for ftops events w/ no success. i think i played 5 45 person sngs and didn't crack the top 15 in any. the limit holdem was going very well until an opponent hit runner runner on me for a massive pot. i think i went out 35th in that. i also played the 8:15pm $26 razz tourny and while razz is one of my favorite games in the horse rotation it got pretty old pretty quick. i managed to give it my all but my premium starting hands were getting destroyed on 4th and 5th street.


so all in all it was a bitter sweet night. the sweetness is how proud i am of my play in the 7pm. i think it's my best played tournament ever which kind of makes it bitter than i didn't hit the big score (8.3k for first). i guess the 60k push utg 6 handed is somewhat debatable. i have 11.5 bb's and i have shoving a lot so i'm bound to get called. the other factor is that the bb had like 260k so he probably has a wider calling range than most at that point in the tournament. not sure.

oh well, i guess all i can do is take another stab tonite. i'll probably only play the few earlier evening tournaments tonite but tomorrow will be an absolute marathon as i have the whole day and night cleared for whatever i want to play.

special thanks goes out to Rex55 who gave me some top notch rail support when i needed it the most!

tg