New Orleans: Day 1 - The Long Day Begins

A pattern is being established. If you click on the poker tag at the bottom, you will see I seem to always do fairly poorly in my first event and fairly well in subsequent events.

Event 5

Buy-In: $500

Entrants - 180

Finish - Somewhere around 120

Winning early is a bad sign. Generally, I like to take a few hands to get a feel for the table. But in this one I looked down at A-Q suited on the very first hand. After a pre-flop raise and a call, then a post-flop raise and a fold, I took down a fairly nice first pot. It would be the last chips I would drag in the tournament.

What would follow would be over two hours of frozen cards and every time something materialized, several other players would follow me in and catch. The worst was a hand where I made a set on the flop and another player caught a flush on the turn. That cost me 1/3 of my stack.

The final moment rang with the theme of the day. After seeing not one face card for almost an hour, I looked down at A-Q again. With a stack only 5 times the big blind, I pushed. Immediately one of the large stacks called. Then the other large stack also called. All I could think was "oh lord I am doomed". After the flop, they both pushed all in and I just let out a sigh of dejection. Turning over the cards, one had Q-Q and the other had a flush draw. With my Ace I still had a chance. But the flush caught on the river and it was all over.

At 2.5 hours it was my shortest outing yet. I drank a beer and considering the karma thought about giving up on the rest of the day. But there was a second event at 3:00 and I decided to give it a try.

Lesson learned? No matter how good, never play the first hand.