I had played Day 1A so I wasted most of Friday commuting from a pub to a bookies and donating some cash to the local economy. I had a long think about the previous day, I’d played way too snug with the only consolation I was still in. I was low in chips but decided the strategy for Saturday was too be much more aggressive if I could get hold of any chips.
Average chips was over 30k so I needed to push pretty early with my 13k if I was to make any sort of a recovery. This is the first of 2 spots in the tourney where I got very lucky. The blinds were 400/800 and the button had made it 2.5k, the small blind called and I looked down at 66 in the big blind. I did think of passing but somehow the chips went into the middle rather than the cards. The button snap called (good job there’s no penalty for inside swearing) and the small blind reluctantly folded pocket
. The button turned over AK but never hit and I’d got the desperately needed double through.
I now had a few chips but in my mind I was thinking one more double up and I’m in great shape. The next hour the deck seemed to just hit me in the face. I played all draws or made hands very aggressively and by the time the first break came I had over 60K in chips nicely above average for the first time in the tournament.
I did make one bad error when I had aces and gave the strength of my hand away by making a stupid comment and the guy quickly folded AQ because of what I’d said. In what seemed like minutes we were playing hand for hand on the bubble. On our table Pete Linton decided this was a nice time to pick up some easy chips raising most hands and picking up several uncontested pots. I did play one hand on the bubble, Pete raised as per usual and I thought my KJ suited was good enough to see a flop. The flop came a king and 2 low cards and I check called a bet of just over half the pot. I had decided to check raise the turn if there was no ace but after the queen on the turn Pete made a bigger bet than I expected. Now there was 2 choices fold and dribble into the money or push and hope he’s at it. I pushed and the relief not to hear an instacall from Pete was huge. He said he knew I had KQ all the while I was trying to look as relaxed as possible but let out a huge sigh of relief when he mucked. The bubble burst on another table not long after this and it felt great to have made the money and we were down to 2 tables.
Next came a huge stroke of luck, Rob Sherwood was now sat to my right and limped into my big blind. I was holding 79 and was happy to see a flop as most pots were being raised. The flop came dome 10 8 2 rainbow and Rob bet out. I continued my policy of betting draws heavily and moved in. Rob quickly called with top two pair but I spiked a jack on the turn for a huge pot that crippled Rob. He went out not long after but we had a brief chat at the bar on the Sunday and he’s a class act both on and off the table.
I was now one of the chip leaders and in what seemed like no time we were down to 9 players and the final table with me sat in 3rd place. I was shellshocked.
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