I find it easier to reflect over things when they went badly... guess the hands stick in my mind a bit more.
Ran pretty well last night which was really nice; didn't really get it in behind and win at all as far as I remember, just found some nice spots at intervals to keep the chip stack ticking along and got value when they came.
Had a fun first table with Chompy pushing the action throughout. I enjoy playing with Chompy because I always feel my image gets pushed along with his. If I raise 1/5th of the amount he does people tend to treat my raise the same. Anyway I took my 2nd chance immediately, giving me 10k to play with, while most others stayed with the 5k. The structure suited me down to the ground, that tournament had loads of play in it, even the final table was not shove poker for the mostpart.
At the start I just ticked along, watching Chompy raise every pot and then moan when he kept getting called by the rest of the table
. A few of the larger hands included getting it all in with Ali (?) on a 89592 board for an 80-or-so BB pot. I obv had raised UTG with the
. Ali claimed afterwards that he had the aces, but i'm not sure I believe him. Just before he called he muttered "You must have AQ or AK...".
I had a slightly unsavoury hand vs TV's Mr Kendall, in which I popped it up from mid position with Aces, he flatted to my immediate left. The board came 78x, I made a continuation bet, Tony put in all of his big chips, leaving just a handful behind. I said 'I'm all in then', and there was an awkward period where he waited for me to turn my cards over and I waited for him to put all of his chips in. He obviously thought that I was just wanting him to turn over the hand first, so he did, and still had his chips behind. I'm pretty sure if a ruling had been called TK's hand would have been mucked, but none of us really wanted to see that. I did hesitate for a while in the confusion, but of course I didn't call for a ruling in the end. Apologies to tikay if I took a bit too long.
The other not-particularly-skillful highlight was early on the final table, where there had been a raise from early position, a call, then Mr McBride shipped it in from the cutoff with AK, only for me to find Aces in the big blind. This hand gave me a big stack, and I tried to keep the pressure on throughout the whole final table, which was a challenging balancing-act, as the blinds were not actually that high.
Eventually I got heads-up with a previously short-stacked Vinny (who did excellently to hang around and then find his double-ups), I had over a 2-1 chip advantage. The blinds left plenty of play, but I wasn't looking forward to it particularly, as I was pretty shattered. I raised with
, he called and we saw a
flop. He checked, I bet, he shoved, I called. He had
and a jack binked the turn, making us nearly level. We played a few more hands then the break hit, and we decided to chop.
I'll be back down there at 8.15ish, look forward to seeing you down there. Half way there!! 5 down, 5 to go.
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