BitterSweet

Filed Under: Poker

Walking in the door at 8:57 pm last night I tried to get logged on in time for the 20K at Full Tilt but didn't quite make it. As an alternative I joined the alternate list for the 12.5K at UltimateBet. My seat was ready 6 hands into the event.

The beauty of online tournaments (at least at the levels I play) are that you don't have to get out of line in the first hour. A vast majority of the time if you play your big cards, well, big, then you will get action and you will make progress. I was fortunate last night as I managed to double up twice and took over 6,000 in chips to the first break. This allowed me quite a bit of breathing room and I was able to play a conservatively aggressive game for the most part.

I played what I would consider two key hands which decided my outcome in this particular tournament. The first one occurred with about 45 players left in the field. Forty places paid and I was sitting right around an average chip stack at the time. Having been moved to the table 16 hands ago, this comes up:

tdjenkins is at seat 0 with 22030.
weim is at seat 2 with 30080.
SIRCALLSALOT is at seat 3 with 1945.
Eddycash is at seat 4 with 9020.
makavelyces is at seat 9 with 6270.

ante is (75)
Q22 posts the small blind of 300.
weim posts the big blind of 600.

tdjenkins: Qs Qh

Pre-flop:

SIRCALLSALOT folds. Eddycash calls. equalizer5
folds. JB2107 folds. mattmancg folds. makavelyces
calls. tdjenkins raises to 3975. Q22 folds. weim
re-raises to 14100. Eddycash folds. makavelyces
folds.

With only 15 previous hands to pull from I have no real read on weim. He's taken down two hands preflop and hasn't played anything else outside his blinds. I initial read would be that he's playing pretty solid and we are definitely at bubble time.

Do you fold, call, raise, and why?

I'll post the results on that one later.

The second key hand was at the final table. Yes I made the final table. In fact I had my best finish to date in this tournament going out in 4th. This is the hand that crippled me.

I simply wasn't able to recover from that. In hindsight I'd make the same move over again. I've ran well in multi's over the last month but just haven't been able to seal the deal. The cash helped erase a horrible two weeks of ring game play so it all works out.