Second Place Is Not So Bad!

I played one of those "cheapie" tournaments yesterday at the Cable Bridge - $15. I thought I was going to be gone early, as I was down to 375 under the gun and the blinds were 100-200. I looked at my cards to find 2-2 and pushed all-in. I got two callers. Flop was 6-8-6. They both checked. Turn was a 3. They both checked again. I was feeling pretty good about it. The river was a deuce! Full house for me! Yippee! They both checked again. One had K-J and the other had A-J and neither one of them had hit a darned thing and pocket twos were a monster without the boat on the end. That made me feel better.

A couple of hands later (small blind) I pushed all-in again with pocket threes and got no callers. Three hands after that I pushed all-in with a suited A-J and won the pot. Then I was off to the races as it were.

I must say that I had one "used-to-be-blonde" moment at the next to last table. I had 9-10 diamonds and for some strange reason decided to raise. Another player re-raised enough to put me all-in. I went crazy and called. I figured I had "ace busters" and for no apparent reason I fell in love with my hand. He had A-K diamonds. I prepared to leave. He hit nothing and I hit a nine on the turn to win the hand. I was SO lucky and he did have A-K - see comment on that sucky hand below. Another very lucky hand was when I pushed all-in with pocket fives only to be called by Larry with pocket nines and hit a five on the flop. He was not happy. I WAS!

I ended up taking second place for a profit (after buy-in and $10 tip) of $160. This is not bad for a $15 tournament. They paid $300-$200-$100 and we took $15 off first and second to pay 4th and 5th because the final table took over one hour (good players) and everyone agreed that it was fair. I didn't get home until 10:20 p.m. I could have split with the winner (Larry of pocket nines fame), but we agreed that neither one of us gets much practice with short-handed play or even head's up play because there's a lot of splitting going on, so we just played it out.

The last hand was his A-2 against my A-K.

A-K SUCKS!! I had fun anyway. I might even play the $11 one tonight!