BADA BING....BADA BOOM!

It started off as just another normal Sunday filled with football, beer, and poker. I fired up Full Tilt around 3:00 to see what was going on and noticed that there were a few low limit tourneys that looked enticing so I registered. A $5 double stack and a $3 180...nothing to big but something to keep my attention while the chargers romped the Titans. I particularly like the double stack tourneys for the added play and more maneuverability throughout the early stages.

I doubled up very early in the $5 tourney with aces which was very vital to making it deep. Having a 6K stack when the blinds are so low allows you to see so many more flops and apply a lot of pressure on most players. This helps to continuously chip up and last longer in these things. It was then around the 2nd break when I went on one of the biggest heaters I've ever seen! It consisted of 7 hands which I won 6 of and improved my stack from 4K to 34K! It was rather smooth sailing from there to make the cash bubble which was 118 people or so. The payouts were obviously very top heavy and nothing but 5th place and up was going to bring me satisfaction.

I don't have the entire hand history in front of me but I do remember one hand from deep in the tourney that netted me some much needed chips. I was on the button w/ Qs10s and limped along with two others. The flop came 10 high and it was checked around...the turn brought another under card not making any straight possibilities and first to act fired about a 3/4 size bet at the pot and it was called by second to act. I was pretty certain that with the ranges these players were limping there was no way someone who flopped top pair was checking behind on the flop....unless it was a disguised 2 pair or something like that, but even then it would have been a very obscure holding. So I felt my top pair w/ an above average kicker was ahead so I squeezed on the pot and induced a really bad call by the player that was first to act. He was holding 97 for second pair and I shipped a monster with about 30 people left.



From there I feel like I played a great end game applying pressure around the bubbles and chipping up for the final table. One big hand that sticks out from the final table was when we were 3 handed and I pushed on the player 3rd in chips for a good bit of my stack w/ AsKs...he flipped QsJs and won the race:(. That crippled me 3 handed and I saw all hope of shipping the tourney dwindle down the drain. But little did I know I was going to pick up AA vs. QQ to get me right back into the mix. After that grace from the poker gods I moved into 1st place with well over a million chips and ran great from there on out. The last hand I want to talk about was a monster call I made heads up versus this hyper aggressive player. Just a little back ground on how this player had been playing HU first. We were sitting with pretty close chip stacks but he had the lead...1.5m to roughly 1.2m. First hand of HU I raised and he pushed with about 40BB. He continued to make donkish plays like this risk way too many chips way to often to be playing a solid style IMO. So this hand comes up....I raised my standard 2.5x w/ AhQh and he called from the BB. The flop comes KQ10 rainbow and we both checked. I didn't want to bet into such a draw heavy board in fear of him making one of those donk pushes on top of me. I wanted to rather see a turn w/ outs for the nuts and still a pretty good hand HU. The turn brought another K making the board now read 10QKK. He checked to me and I fired a 3/4 pot size bet at and he insta pushed putting me all in. My thought process here...he would have re-raised preflop w/ any hand that hit that flop (AK,AQ,AJ,KQ,1010+) so my only worry was that he had a hand like K10 or J10. I think with K10 he would have fired at the flop on such a draw heavy board so some like of jack like J10 was all that I could put him on. So I made the call and sure enough he flipped J8off and the river blanked and I shipped a MONSTER. The very next hand I picked up QQ and of course he pushed w/ his remaining 300K and I shipped it! I finally got the monkey off my back and won another tourney. This one netted me 1K and was very gratifying!

So now I'm back and look to be on the tourney train again! We'll see if I can make anything of this run and chip away at some of my goals for 2008!