Two Days, Two Tournaments, Two Cashes Part I

As the title eludes I had some great success earlier this week in tournament play. I wish I could say the same about my limit play but we'll discuss that in a later post/posts. To the topic at hand the Monty Memorial Blogger Tournament was played on Sunday night and the PokerSourceOnline.com Poker Cruise Freeroll on Monday Night. I managed a 10th in the Monty and a win in the Cruise. Needless say I have been on cloud nine for days now but lets get down to business shall we.

Sunday night 77 players put down $22 of Pacific Pokers hard earned money. (for explanation see this post) I was excited and hoping that my three weeks of tournament play prep was going to pay off. Starting out at table #2 I found myself seated with the man himself and a few other bloggers of note. One thing that has been eluded to in other writeups of this event was that the play was extremely tight. I don't have a count but you probably wouldn't have to take your socks off to count the hands that went to showdown in the first few levels. I was fortunate to be in one of those hands that went to showdown when my pocket 10's made quads. This just about doubled me up and I was feeling very confident in my control of the situation. At one point Iggy made an attempt at trash talk when he made mention of the slow play of the table. I believed I responded with something about kicking his ass (chipcount wise). Boy would this come back to haunt me.

At the first break I held t1768 up from the original 1500. With the first hand back I managed to steal the blinds holding AJ. A few more blind steals came my way over the next few rounds to put me back up to just over an average size stack. I was getting ready to settle in when my virtual likeness was promptly moved to Table #8.

After the move was complete the pocket 7's that shown before me found their long lost brother on the flop. This provided a nice double up opportunity. My cards seemed to dry up after this and playable hands were becoming few and far between. At one point I found the hammer in the big blind. I was able to check the flop and every betting round after that. I took the pot down when a 7 hit the river giving me best pair. I never bet it, but I can say I took down a hand with "the hammer".

I had found myself in 10th place and what should have been the final table. That is if Pacific Poker's software actually used all 10 seats available at the tables. For some bizarre reason known only to the Great And Powerful Oz the entire tournament was played 8 handed. As play progressed my favorite hand of the night was dealt to the screen. 77 in the small blind and as stated earlier I doubled with this hand. I had also won a pot with a pair of sevens while holding the hammer. If memory serves I was the shortest stack remaining and I decided this was a good time to double up. When we went to the flop I was heads up against f2aler. My sevens were a big underdog to f2aler's nines and the board of J9888 sealed my fate and finish position.

I finished in the 10 spot and Pacific deposited the $30.80 into my account. The iggster went on to dominate the final players and took it all down. There was much discussion about Pacific Poker guaranteeing an additional $500 into the pot. This money did not show up when the tournament started but the next day I did receive an email telling me that they had to do the addition manually and that another $10 had been deposited as my share of the added monies.

I want to thank Iggy for the fine tournament and barring a nuclear holocaust I plan to be playing in the next one. Pacific Poker was up and down in their handling of things with this tournament. Overall the experience was mediocre but only because of the 8 handed play. They recovered from their original tournament scheduling snafu and the added money was apparently always supposed to be done manually. This wasn't enough though and I don't see myself playing there anymore. Tomorrow will be a bit more detailed writeup of the PSO tournament. Since we played that one at Party Poker I actually have hand histories. (Another drawback of Pacific) At any rate, until tomorrow.....