Blogger freeroll tournament summary

Things started very nicely indeed. This is hand #1:




That took me into 9th place, which I can't complain about for the first hand:




Nothing much of interest happened then until hand #50:



Just kind of a standard position move/float/steal there, but I liked it.

Hand #58:




If redsmith had bet again on the river, I would have folded, but when he checked I thought he probably couldn't call an all-in move. I turned out to be right. Perhaps he was spooked by the memory of me having beaten him with the two pairs back on hand #1. I was in 97th place after that hand.

I got a huge bump up on hand #65:



Of course, to my opponent in the big blind, it looked like I was just trying to steal from him. His reraise with a bad ace was perfectly reasonable. My fourth bet size was intended to look fairly weak (as if I were just desperately hoping he had nothing and would have to fold, while leaving myself room to dump the hand), trying to tempt him to shove--and it worked! Whee! It's not particularly brilliant poker to beat A-9 with an A-K, but I think I can give myself some credit for coaxing an opponent--not a stupid one--to put all his chips in pre-flop with A-9, as a roughly 3:1 dog.

That hand put me into 11th place:



It also got mentioned in the PokerStars live blog:



With that one exception, I wasn't being dealt much in good hands, so I had to make do with what I had. Here's hand #70:



Again, I'm not claiming that this is ultra-brilliant poker; it's simply the kind of thing you have to attempt sometimes to keep ahead of the blinds in a tournament. Sometimes it blows up in your face, sometimes (like this one) it looks as easy as taking candy from a baby.

That put me into 8th place heading into the first break:



Speaking of things blowing up in one's face, take a gander at hand #75:



When he checked the turn, I thought I probably had the best hand with my 9s. But I was wary enough to check behind, lest I face a check-raise, which would have given me a very difficult decision. The river call was fairly automatic, because I thought that if he really had top pair he would have bet the turn. Nicely played on his part--sucked me in all the way. That dropped me down to 19th place, so not too terrible a hit.

I had shown a couple of blind steals with trash, and it seemed to pay off in hand #95, when one of the blinds apparently thought I was pulling the same trick yet again:



That brought me all the way up to 6th place:




I drifted downward in the rankings for a while, then came hand #135:




With that guy's ridiculously huge open-shove, I was about as confident as I could be that he had a medium pair, somewhere between 6s and jacks. I decided I was willing to flip a coin with him to try to get back into a big-stack situation that I could exploit. It worked--put me into 17th.

Now off to a new table. This was actually a good thing, because I had been only about 3rd stack at my old table, but at the new one I had nearly 50% more than the next-biggest stack.

As it turned out, it was a good thing I had a big stack in order to absorb this nasty little hit (a 5-outer) on hand #152:




Down to 56th place at that point.

At the second break I was up a bit, to 48th place out of 170 runners.

I got another boost in hand #164, when I made a moderately difficult but ultimately correct call:





At hand #190, the open-shove again looked to me like a middle pair. At the least, I was pretty sure he wouldn't do that move with A-A or K-K, the only hands to which I'm a big dog here. I was willing to race with him, in the hopes of climbing higher on the leaderboard, since I was really trying to finish deep and not just cash. The decision was also made easier by the fact that this player had open-shoved something like four out of the previous ten hands or so:





That got me up to 23rd place.

And then I got stuck in the muck. Card-dead with bigger stacks aggressively abusing the near-bubble situation. Just couldn't do a thing.

After the "money" bubble passed, the all-ins came fast and furious, and again I couldn't find a hand with which to take on of them one, and the blinds really eroded my stack.

Finally I got a situation in hand #220 where I was on the button and everybody folded to me. I was getting sufficient short-stacked that winning those blinds and antes was definitely worth a risk:





One of the bloggers got it exactly right--bad enough in that situation for one of the blinds to have a real hand, but Q-Q and A-K??? What rotten luck!





But I have no regrets. I think that in terms of tournament strategy it was the right thing to do.
I can't just fold and let the blinds play by themselves, and if I put in a standard-sized raise and get reraised, I have the awful choice between relinquishing something like a third of my stack to what might be a bluff resteal and playing on very short-stacked, or calling off my whole stack with the horrible J-4. So even after reflection, I think I'd do the same thing again.

The whole tournament was fun and interesting, and I did a lot better than I did in last year's. I think it's generally true that I'm a better player than I was a year ago, and that includes in online tournaments, which are not at all my specialty. It would have been nice to do better, but finishing in 74th place out of 369 players is honorable enough, and I got a Step 3 ticket for my efforts.

If that turns into anything, naturally I will report it here.