Anyone who knows me, knows that I'm prone to over thinking things a little. So... most of yesterday was spent trying to figure out little things like:
- Should I get to the card room early and play a little cash to work out the jitters, or only arrive in time to play the tourney and forget about cash for the moment.
- How many chips are likely going to be in play? How many total qualifications would there have been and what % of those will be multiples (2,3,4,5, or 6)?
- Would the floor man give me the details for the Monday night qualifier?
In the end, I decided that I would arrive at the card room 1.5 hours before the tourney to play an hour of cash beforehand. The goal was simply to get in game flow before the tourney, and try to play cash like the tourney (tight), not like my usual cash game (loose-aggressive). It worked out nicely as I booked a $47 profit and was mentally primed for the tournament.
Playing cash also gave me the opportunity to talk to the floor man about the tournament the night before. He told me that there were 70 qualifications, but only 42 showed. Some no shows were expected as some people who played the tourney during the qualifying period were not there to qualify, but to simply play a tournament. Other's may have forgot, and the room is open to allowing them to re-schedule to another day, which is nice of them.
He also said that all nights had about 70 qualifiers, which is useful information. The tourney series ran for 30 weeks, which meant there were 900 qualifications up for grabs. I had guesstimated on Monday that there was going to be about 60 per night, so that tells me there will be fewer large stacks per night.
I also found out that the finals will start at the lowest of the blind levels of the 6 semis and that the Monday semi finished at 4k-8k (too high!). So, I'm hoping that one of the nights finishes fast to give us some play in the finals, otherwise it'll be a shove fest.
The weirdest things I discovered is that I still had to pay to play in this tourney. They still took the $8 rake! That was totally unexpected. I would have preferred to have known that beforehand....
We started our semi-final, and our table only had 3 people will additional chips. As they were distributing out the chips, I wondered if some of the bigger stacks would be a little looser because they would not be all-in against a shorter stack. How would I know that would come into play first hand!
I'm in middle position with Ad8d, blinds are 100/100 and I raise over 1 limper on my right to 400. The BB calls and the limper calls and we are 3 to the flop. Run good begins: flop is 887. There is already 1300 in the pot and I have 4600 in my stack, and it is checked to me. I bet 1100, fully expecting everyone to fold. The BB folds but the limper calls. Turn is a K. He checks, and I move in for the rest of my 3500. Hey, I'd be happy with the 3500 in the pot, but lo and behold, the guy to my right is one of the guys with extra chips. He's got an extra 2k, so he pulls out the calling chips and looks at his remaining 2k. He's not thinking about my hand, he just cares that he'll have chips left if he loses and eventually makes the call with K7 for 2 pair. I fade the K river, and I have doubled up first hand. I couldn't have asked for better practice for my qualifier next week with 10k, as I now have 10.5k in may stack after the first hand of the tournament. My run good continued from there. I won a few small pots, and got up to 14k. Then my run good paused, and I lost a hand flush over flush, to get knocked down to 7k, but then re-doubled and before I knew it I was up at 18k.
From there, most of the people had sub 8k stacks, with some at sub 4k stacks, which meant I had to make some loose all-in calls from the BB versus all-ins from short stacks. I called 2k more at 400/800 from the BB on an open shove with T6o, and beat AJo. He wasn't happy with my call, let me tell you. A few more like that, and I had run my stack to 40k with 20 people left. Then things stopped working. I got dealt 44 in quick succession and raise PF, only to be called in 2 places both times and having to fold after missing the flop. That brought me down to 32k. Then I made a bone-headed mistake. I meant to raise to 5k at the 1k/2k level, and tossed out a 5k chip, but neglected to say raise, so it was interpreted as an overchip call. I was instead called by the button and SB. I was on a pure steal with Js4s. The flop came 4c5s9s, which is as good a flop I could have expected for my hand. SB shoved for 8k, I re-shoved to isolate, but the BTN came along. He flipped over 94o for flopped 2 pair and the SB showed 85o for flopped middle pair. It was a flip between me and the BTN, one that I lost and crippled me down to 14k. If I had raised correctly, they all would have folded and I would have won the 3k in blinds. Live and learn...
From there, I open-shoved a few times, and was able to steal blinds enough times to get myself back above 20k. The it was a battle of attrition. We were down to 12, so players were being tight not wanting to bubble. I got lucky in one spot where I open shoved A6o from UTG and the BB to my right, who had enough chips to call, and still have *some* left over, mucked AsJs. I flashed him my A to make him feel like he made the right play to fold. The irony is that he was the next person knocked out after running bad into the person 2 to his right in 3 hands in a row.
Once he was gone and we were down to hand-for-hand play, everything slowed down, and that's where the blinds start going up fast. No one wants to play, so we finally knocked out the bubble boy and I made the finals. The stacks at the end of the night for our final 10 were: 26.5k (me), 15.5, 75, 32, 46.5, 61, 87, 18.5, 21, 8. That leaves me with a below average stack of 6BB @ 2k/4k blinds if that's where we start the finals. However, the average stack, 39.1k is less than 10BB, so there should be opportunities to steal blinds if I need to. It'll all be able knowing my push/fold equities at that time.
Given that last night's average starting stack was roughly 6.75k and the night before there were only 42 players, that means that the average stack from the night before was probably around 28.5k. So, my stack isn't terrible relatively so far. Though if more players play the other qualifiers, my stack will go down further relative to average.
I'm super happy that I qualified. It'll be much less stressful next week and I can play solid poker instead of scared poker. I'm really looking forward to it.
After the tourney, I played some cash. I played 15 minutes of 3/6 LHE and won 2 hands to leave +57, then moved over thee NLHE where I then continued to run well and booked a 467 win!
So my stats are now:
+69 1/2 NLHE
+82 3/6 LHE
-443 3/6 LO8
+172 tourney
+200 promos
-18 food
= $62!
See you next week!
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