[poker] hell yeah!

[mangosteen]

I got up entirely too early this morning, and in a fit of boredom, I fired up the laptop, put BBC news on the TV for sonic wallpaper, and settled in to play some poker online. In this case, it was a $5+.50 pot-limit hold'em tournament.

We started with 38 players, and in keeping with all the advice I ever got on tournament play, I played to survive through the first few levels. I'd play true premium hands (AA, KK, AKs, QQ), but that's about it. My stack remained pretty much unchanged through level 4, and I was playing a bit weak-tight, but I was waiting for other, looser players to go out first, which they inevitably did. Finally, after hitting top set on the flop, and slowplaying it to perfection, I doubled up, and had a little more room to maneuver.

I had my share of luck including pushing all-in with A8 vs. JJ, and hitting an A on the turn, and another hand where I was all-in and hit the nut flush on the turn, but that was about it. That, and a few good reads got me through to the final table.

Hitting trips twice in the next few hands bought me more time, but it was time to start playing a lot more aggressively.

Observation: In a escalating-blind tournament structure, the limit of the amount of hands that you can play with your stack, as time goes to infinity, is 1.

The top 5 places paid out. The chip leader tried knocking me out several times, setting me all-in on hands that were playable, but only sort of. I managed to have the better hand, or suck out on the turn each time. I explained this by saying that when I lived in Manhattan, I was bitten by a radioactive cockroach, and thus inherited its powers of indestructibility.

I was finally knocked out when I was set all-in with KJ, with KJ7 on the board, and the chip leader (who I presume won, but I didn't stay around for the end) had 77. The board came up with rags, and I was out....IN THIRD PLACE!

I walked away with $38 (so $32.50 in profit). This is the first time I ever placed in the money at a multi-table tournament. This makes me inordinately happy. One can't be just lucky, to get that far.

It's certainly a hell of a way to start a day.