I had wanted to finish the long blog of my experience at this 600+40 buy in tournament with 2100 (!) entrants on Saturday but between blogger.com eating my last entries to just a general feeling of exhaustedness after it was all done, I opted to take a brief respite.
When last we looked I was working on the third hour of the tournament with an above average chip stack.
It's at about this time that I received a phone call reminding me about an important lunch that I had previously scheduled. Arrrgg! Now I was in a bind--I could skip the lunch and take my chances for the rest of the tournament, making several family members quite angry, or I could go to the lunch and give up a chance at 272,000. Just then, option #3 came to me... I have a friend who's a very decent no-limit ring game player. A quick instant message and he was available to take over for a 50% stake. I could go to lunch and still have a chance.
Lunch was very good.
When I had left there were about 1500 people left and the top 220 were in the money. When I returned my friend had made it to 134th place and was still in the tournament(!). He had a slightly below average chip stack at this point (24k) so I put on my spectator goggles and watched him try to climb his way through the money. He made it to 100th, then 90, 80, 70, 60, 50! During this time he only played three hands and they were all all-in. AKs (he won unimproved) pocket Queens where he beat out pocket Jacks at the end and finally pocket 9s against an opponent holding AKo who hit an Ace on the flop...
He skipped playing one hand which I found interesting. The person UTG raised all in for about 5x the big blind (at this level most people at the table were right around 4-5x the big blind). My friend, on the big blind, has pocket Jacks and has the person covered in chips (although he'd only have 2x the big blind if he lost) and he folds his hand. He said that this particular player was very tight and he thought the most likely hand was AK and he wasn't willing to go into a desperate chip position if he lost (although really everyone was in a desperate chip position at his table). He wanted to be able to take a few guaranteed trips around the table and pick his move somewhere else and not risk being dominated by a hand like QQ/KK/AA. It sounds reasonable, but I can guarantee you I will call that bet with JJ every time. Even though it's possible I might be a big dog it's also likely that I have a slight edge, and there's a decent chance the person has a hand like 88, 99 or TT in which case I have a huge edge. Combine that with the fact that there's already 6,000 in the pot and I think a call is very reasonable.
He didn't make this call, though, and did end up just north of 40th place. A great finish, though not the 1st we were both hoping for. Still with $2,000 and change each in prize money it wasn't bad. Not bad at all.
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