New Orleans: Day 1 - Deep Into The Night

Event 6

Buy-in - $300
Entrants - 280
Finish - 13th

Given my earlier disaster, I entered this one much more relaxed. I became even more relaxed when I sat down next to a gentleman from Texas intent on having a good time. He began bouncing his chips into a cup holder. One after another in an endless stream. Despite him being in his 60s, I told him I would never play quarters against him.

Good thing I had that moment of levity too, because as I looked around the table, I immediately realized it was one of the toughest I had ever faced. I spotted what appeared to be at least four seasoned tournament veterans and only one real fish. My read was pretty correct as early on one of the younger guys put a beatiful check-raise play on me and drove me out of the pot. It was a beautiful play. But I got him back a little later.

A critical hand happened about 1 hour in. Once again, I had A-Q. It seemed to be my hand of the day and as you will see later, it was not finished. But in this hand, I was sitting on about the same chips I had started with. Since I was in early position I just limped in. A guy all the way at the other end of the table made a standard raise and I was the only one to call. The flop came down Q-8-6 rainbow. I decided to make a play. I checked. He made a raise which was about half my stack. I paused for a second and then pushed everything in. He went into the tank. Finally, he said, "I'm showing you a lot of respect" and folded a pair of Kings face up.

I pulled my chips and and the table chatter became frantic. Everyone debated whether I had hit three of a kind on the flop or if I was full of crap. As I stacked, I glanced up and noticed one of the seasoned players saying nothing, just staring at me. I couldn't help myself. I gave him a wink.

The tournament developed its normal rhythm of ups and downs and soon I was moved to a new table. It was an odd mix of experienced and inexperienced.

In every long tournament, especially one where you are not running very well, a player will reach the nadir point. It is a crossroads where due to bad luck, tiredness or just plan fed-upedness a player will do something foolish. Deep in the brain, the primal instinct starts whispering that things will be better if you just finish the misery no matter what. The result of the nadir point is usually elimination but sometimes it launches the player on a new run which will carry him deep into the tournament. Guess what hand was my nadir point.

Despite my earlier success, I was still grinding around the average chip stack. It had been a frustrating day and I just couldn't get any traction. Once again I looked down at A-Q. I made a substantial pre-flop raise and it folded all the way around the table to one young kid. He pushed all in and I let out a sigh. He had me covered. I didn't think I could take another substantial hit to my stack and face the slow climb back out of the hole. I muttered, "Okay let's get it over" and called. He flipped over kings. I hit the Ace on the flop and took it down. The kid was devastated and I suddenly could see the other side of the hill.

Over the next several hours, I continued to build my stack to more and more respectability. I doubled up again by playing pocket Aces perfectly against a guy who had pocket Kings. I finessed a slow play of a set of cowboys against four players to eliminate one player and drag a huge pot. Suddenly, I was on the edge of the money.

Considering my stack was now way above the tournament average, I walked into the money. Now down to 18 I was moved to a new table with a new set of factors. Of the nine players, six I had not seen all day.

I was sitting on about 40k in chips and the tournament average was about 23k. Only one person had a larger chip stack. As is usually the case in the late stages, the short stacks were eliminated one by one until all that was left were people with decent stacks and decent games.

Late in a tournament, you have to gamble. You must play hands that you know will be close and you have to win. This is where luck starts to factor. To win any tournament, you have to win at least a few of these situations. At about 11:30pm, I put on a clinic on how to lose half your stack. It began when my A-J doubled up an all in player who had K-10 and only got worse from there. Over the next hour I dropped half my stack.

The end came with me holding, you guessed it, A-Q. The other player flipped up A-K and I never improved. Out in 13th place with enough money to cover both buy-ins for the day.

So 13 hours later I was dead even. But it was my second cash in three tournaments and this feels good.

Today, I am not going to play any heavy poker. Maybe just a few single tables. And God help me, if I look down at A-Q, I honestly won't know what the hell to do.