Running Good!

I did it again! Last night I played in a few tournaments, one of which was a first for me...the $30 deep stack starting at 2:00am which I chopped 3 ahnded and then won the leftovers. This tourney was a lot of fun due to its structure which was 5K in starting chips and 30 min. blind levels! This was a great structure for me seeing as how I love deepstack tourney play. I was able to actually play poker and and not worry about going broke with one hand or antoher.

Things never really got out of hand and I don't think I ever dipped below the original 5K. My savior in this tourney was the reckless player sitting directly to my right. And when I say reckless I truly mean it...he was open pushing on 250 chip pots with 200 bb's and just min re-raising any pre-flop raises in position. Needless to say he was a great ATM to have at the table and padded my stack many of times. I think at one point he was atually the chip leader after having sucked on Aces when he hit his bullshit two pair on the river. It was just a matter of time with this guy and not long after the money bubble he just handed his chips over to a player with bottom pair.

Something to think about in this tourney was the amount of post flop play and how this benifitted more experienced players. I think I only got my chips all in 2 or three times and that was when were are at the final table. The majority of the time I tried to keep the pots small and chip up without confrontation. My stratagey going into the final table was to sit back and let the hee haws knock each other out given the top heavy pay scale. I did just that and before I knew it we were down to 5 players when a crucial hand came up.

I was in the BB with J7s and it was raised 3x by the button. I made the call and saw a flop of Q23 with two spades. I check trying to peel off a free card but instead get faced with a pot size bet of around 14K. At this point a few things are running threw my mind...first, what hand range do I put this player on? Well, given the structure and amount of chips we are sitting with he has such a wide range I choose to look at the situation this way. It was 14K for me to call, which is roughly a 10th of my stack and I am pretty sure (given the strength of his flop bet) that if a spade comes on the turn I can get all of his chips. I call and the 5 of spades comes on the turn. I insta check and after thinking about it for a while he pushes for around 121K....I call and he flips AdKs. The river blanked thankfully and I get shiped a monster.

So we now have a player on tilt, tortuga with a shit load of chips, and 1st place in sight! Two more players get knocked out that were short stacks and we decided to chop 3 handed. At this point we had been playing for over 6 hours and I was dead tired so anything proposal was fine by me. I think 1st - 3rd initally took 1700, 1200, 780 and we ended up chopping for 1300, 1250, and 1100. I got the 1100 having been 3rd in chips but shipped the remainder of the tourney for an extra $50. When everything was said and done I ws very happy with this tourney not only for the cash but more so for my pacientce and well thought out play.

My bankroll now sits at $5300 and we are looking good for the 10K goal. Here are my stats thus far for July...

2007 July	Prizes	Profit	ROI	ABI	ITM
Hold'em NL	$7,111	$5,616	376%	$20	11/76 (14%)