Tournament Trials and Tribulations; Truckin'

I certainly made up for my recent lack of poker playing this weekend. Friday night I hit the ring games on Stars and Party. Nothing much to report here, though I did end up a few bucks at the end of the night.

Saturday night I decided to play in a few tournaments. For lack of any better options, I joined the 50FPP on Stars. 702 registrants, only the top 9 places play for a prize pool of $250.00. Now obviously you don't play this tournament for the money, but I thought I would use it as a warm up for the $20NLHE tourney that started an hour later. Since I have been playing a lot of O8, it can't hurt to get back into the HE grind with a freeroll. Well - over three and a half hours later, I finished in a heartbreaking 15th place. In any other tournament, 15th would have paid a decent amount of money, but in this case I failed to cash. What hurt the most though was the mental anguish of being that close to the bubble and not making it past.

Again, for lack of better options, (and since I missed my chance to play the $20NLHE) I then decided to play in the $1 O8 tourney, which is becoming somewhat of a nightly ritual for myself and some of the other bloggers.

Very first hand and I am in the BB with AJ55 rainbow. Eight players remain in the hand when the flop comes 5,K,10. I bet out, it is raised and reraised until the betting is capped. The next card? Another 5. There was no chance to slow play as all rounds of betting were capped on every street. I ended up with a stack of approx. T6000 and first place going into the second hand. Three hands and two boats later, I had over T10000 and a commanding lead.

This continued for the rest of the tournament. I held first place for approximately 3/4 of the game. I did drop down several times as stacks would catch up, but I only fell out of the top 30 places once, and would eventually win another hand to reclaim my lead. There were 925 players in this game, and the top 81 places paid. I wish I had a better ending to this story, but I finished in 56th place when I lost two major hands back to back.

In other, much more interesting news - Pauly has published the April edition of Truckin' and I am honored to have been asked back to submit another piece. If you have never read this amazing literary e-zine, you are seriously missing out. This issue features stories by ThePokerGeek, Grubby, Joe Speaker, Sigge S. Amdal, and of course, the editor, writer, and founder, Mr. Tenzin McGrupp. Show some support for your local bloggers and writers by visiting the site, and if you enjoy what you read, please leave a comment and pass on the link to a friend!