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Bigger Deal Tournament

October 31, 2007 on 7:57 am | In General |

I played in my first multi table tournament for a month last night. The tournament was hosted by Anthony Holden of Big Deal: One Year as a Professional Poker Player fame. His sequel was called Bigger Deal: A Year on the New Poker Circuit and this book has inspired a blog with inputs from a number of well known writers and poker celebs. It is this blog which hosted a $10 event at PokerStars with $2,700 added money. Also in the field was Al Alvarez who wrote The Biggest Game in Town.

My intention in this game with 15 min blinds was to play real tight and just go with premium hands in the first hour and this is exactly what happened  but sadly because of the tight image I cultivated I only managed to reap the blinds when I got my aces (twice!!). At the end of the hour then I was pretty much where I started. The next hour was again fairly tight although I was trying to loosen up a bit but that is difficult with what seems lik 83 every hand..lol. Anyway I managed to double up this time with Aces as I had only 5 big blinds so it was not too much for the big stack to call. This did put me up to about 25 spot with just 45 of the 191 entrants left and the prospect of getting into the money for the top 18. After another round or two I was getting short again so when it is folded to me on the button I push with my KJ and the big blind ends up with QQ! I was just typing in GG when I hit runner runner Jacks to stay in the game and put my opponent on tilt. After the break the blinds were 300/600 and I had only 3500 chips so I pushed with my AK and double up and then I managed to win a few more hands before we got to the last 19.At this point I was between 16-18 place depending on the blinds and I know I should have been raising but we had the 3 shortest stacks at our table and 3 of the biggest stacks. Any raise that I make is in my opinion always going to be called by a big stack so given the dynamics I decided that the best course of action is to just squeak into the money. The payout for 10-18 spot was around $56. The bubble though lasted around 15 mins and I did eventually push with AK to double up again and therefore managed to outlast one of the other short stacks. That done and being in the money we then come down to 2 tables and I managed to pick up KQ early so I push with my last 5k and I am called by A8 which holds up and I am out in 17th.

This was a good tournament and I had plenty of support from the guys at the UK Football Fans forum which did help me to focus at a time when I was really card dead - thx guys and gals! The next tourney is in 3 weeks so I’ll be up for that and hopefully this time I will get one of the celebs and at table and go bounty hunting!