Since I was already planning on playing the Stars $300 and FTP $200 last night, and I’m going to be playing more tournaments because of FTOPS, I decided just to play all tournaments last night and no cash. That’s probably wise anyway, because the mentality required for tournaments versus is cash is very different, and playing both sometimes screws me up. So I got up a nice stack in the $30 rebuy, and then got kind of cold-decked in a blind battle with another big stack.
Blinds were 400/800, and I had around 25K to start the hand. The SB covered me, but not by a lot. The action folded to him, and he raised to 2200. I held Ad7d, so I had a pretty easy call. With deeper stacks, a re-raise is viable, but here it sucks to get 4-bet. Still, my hand is likely best, and suited means extra playability post-flop. Plus, I have position. So, I call.
Flop is 996cc. He bets 2400, and I call. My Ace high should easily be good often enough to make this profitable in its own right, and with position I think I can sometimes bluff him off if I decide later on that that is necessary. Turn is a 7, and now the die is cast. He checks, I bet 5555, just over half pot, with about 15K behind. He moves all in, and I think that my hand is just too strong to fold on a drawy board in a blind battle. But he had 77 for a turned full house, and that was that.
I’ll spare you a ton of bad beat stories from the other tournaments I played, but I will say that it was nice checking my results at the end of the night. I felt like I’d run terribly, had nothing go my way, etc., and indeed I was like 0/8 in the tournaments I played. When I feel this despondent after a night of 5/10, I’m bracing from some serious damage, so it was pleasant to add up my losses and find I was out less than one buy-in. Maybe tournaments aren’t so bad after all….