Good and Bad

I played in the Tournament of Champions on Sunday at the Cable Bridge. I was going along smoothly with 6100 in chips after the first break and blinds of 200-400. My first mistake was to raise to 1400 in early/middle position with AJ offsuit, which I could have easily folded or limped in with. A guy on the button went all in for a total of 3400. I thought he might be making a "button raise" because he was pretty active on the button. My second mistake was calling him. He had pocket kings and they held up. Just like that, I was down to 2700 in chips and after the blinds I only had 2100.

My next (and fatal) mistake was not having enough patience to wait for a better hand that A3 offsuit to go all-in with about 2 hands later. I got called by - you guessed it - pocket kings. They held up again and I was toast. I was so irritated with myself that I went home and ate a big bowl of ice cream with tons of chocolate sauce to make myself feel better.

However, it is hard to keep me down for very long and I decided to pick myself up, dust myself off and get back on the horse right away. I went back and played the little $15 tournament at 7:00 and I won it! I must pat myself on the back for this because it was seriously tough to win this tournament. At one point, with the blinds at 3,000-6,000 I was all-in with KQ hearts and it held up. There were still 6 players left at that point and I had no chips to speak of. When there were 3 players left I had only 21,000 chips and the other 2 guys had the other 83,000 chips. Yours truly took them down - yippee!!

I feel much better now - and I get to play in another Tournament of Champions in December! :)