I was planning on leaving work at 3:30 pm but of course Friday at the end of shift something comes up. So I got out of work about 4:10 pm. With a couple of stops for alcohol and gas we took off down the road for the 2 1/2 hour trip. The tourney started at 7 pm and we left town at 4:30 pm so I knew I would be showing up late. I called the poker room and they said they would draw a seat card for me. I then called the hotel we were staying at and let them know we would not check in until after 1 am.
The drive was pretty uneventful. My buddy and I talked the whole way down and he kept saying I have a good feeling about this. You are going to do good. I was starting to get pretty nervous. I have only played 7 live tournaments before and those were pretty small. I had placed in the money 3 of those times. I kept thinking about the blind structure and the fact that everybody that would be playing has taken 1st place in their smaller tournaments so they had to be at least descent players.
We missed our turn off interstate and had to drive 15 miles down before we hit another exit. We turned around and made it to Belterra about 35 minutes late. When I walked in I went straight to the cardroom and they showed me to my seat. I had missed about 4 blinds and the blinds were going up for the 3rd time as I sat down.
I was really nervous and since I had came in late I decided to sit and watch how the table played before I moved into action. It was a good thing because I was card dead anyway. Finally, a couple of players mentioned that I had not played a hand yet and it was about the 4th blind. I decided that would be a good time to play a hand as my table image must be tight. I raised from the button as it was folded to me and the small and big blind bailed out of the hand. I had a couple more hands that I walked with that round then I went back to sitting waiting on a hand.
The table as a whole was playing very tight poker. Somebody would raise and the rest of the players would get out of the hand. There were not many showdowns. The person to my right seemed to be a very educated player. He seemed to be picking his spots very well and played fairly aggressively. The 2 people I wanted to get in a hand with were sitting across the table from me and was hard for me to take advantage of their poor play. The person to my left was low stacked and started playing extreemly tight. The second person to my left would call anything down to the river (unless I was in the hand).
We started out with 6000 in chips and the blinds increased every 20 minutes. After a couple hours of play we had not lost a single person off my table. The other tables had lost a couple players each. When they finally moved the player to my right I was able to take over where he left off in aggressiveness. I picked up a lot of small pots and my stack got back to comfortable. It would wittle down to about 3 blinds then I would catch pocket AA's 4 times. None of which got a call, even though I was being aggressive. We finally got down to 2 tables out of the starting 6 for the session and everybody was pretty excited knowing that the final 10 players advance. I was on the low end for chip stacks and knew I would have to fight to make the final table for the day. Bad thing was that I was not getting any cards.
The largest chips stack was across the table, there were a couple of people with about 10bb's, but the rest of us were battling the blinds trying to make it with blinds at 2000/4000. That is when I came into my biggest hand of the day. I was in the BB and had pocket 8's and there were two three others who called the blind leaving me with about 9000. The flop came out Q small card small card. First to act bets 8000. The 2 other callers fold and the decision comes down to me. I will only have 1000 left if I call. There is a Queen on the board, the other 2 cards shouldn't matter but I have not been on the table long enough to get a read on the guy. I really need that pot to stay in the game and have a chance to run deep the next day. Then all of a sudden he flips his cards on the table face up pocket 7's. I look at the dealer and ask what my options are. She said I could do whatever I wanted, so I said raise all in. He was very frustrated and said I did not see his cards. I did not see his cards and mucked his hand. It was only 1000 more to call and he could have caught to send me home but he threw them in. I then had a very descent chip stack. He went all in on the next hand and threw his chips all over the table. Nobody called so he had to rake them and the blinds all back. The next hand the blinds were at 3000/6000. I caught AK and bet 12000, against the large stack in the BB, I thought the blinds were still 2000/4000 or I would have bet more. He folded and I raked the blinds. The next hand would have put the next BB all in with 2 1000 chips. We were playing hand for hand though and on the other table we heard all in. Everybody stood up and then another all in. One of the all ins won and sent the other to the rail. We were down to 10 for the night and everybody celebrated a little and shook hands.
The dealers counted down our chips for the next day. I ended up with 43000 chips from 9000 in the last 10 minutes of play to put me in the top 25% of the field. We went back to the motel to have a celebratory drink and get some rest for the next day of play. They did not announce the payouts but I knew the final day all players got some money. I tried to figure out how much by figuring up how many tournaments were played in 4 months and how many players could have been at the tournaments and how much out of each tournament went towards the prize pool. I calculated between 80 to 120.00. That would be pretty good, considering I spent 60 to get down there and the room after splitting the cost with my buddy. I really wanted the main prize.
I did not sleep real well throughout the night but felt really refreshed in the morning. We drove back to the casino to get checked into the tournament then went to eat at the buffet. I had Saurkraut and Polish Sausage and the pot roast. I only had about 20 minutes to eat but I got a lot of eating done in that time. I walked back into the poker room just in time for the dealers to start handing out the chips.
The table I drew had a lot of the players I had played with the night before. I even drew a seat to the left of the the guy I started to the right of the night before. I knew I had my work cut out for me when I saw that.
We started play with blinds at 1000/2000. I was card dead for the most part. I finally saw AJ suited and the guy to my right raised about a 3rd of my stack. I decided to fold and wait for a better spot, as he likes to raise a lot with A K and J A J falls out on the flop. He got called to showdown and his AK beat another players A rag. I was a little dissapointed but felt I had made a pretty good decision overall. He kept raising on any descent hand I had, unfortunately I had a feeling my descent hands would not hold up to the types of hands he had been catching. Any of them that went to showdown showed me I was right.
I finally got pocket 4's on the button and it was folded to me. I raised 2X bb and the blinds folded. I needed that to make it to the final 2 tables. Along the way with about 32 players left one of the guys said 2 more players until we make more money. I still did not know what the prizes were besides 1st and 2nd so I asked. They said we were at 476. 00 and would go up to 650.00 with 30 players left then 914.00 with 20 players left and once on the final table it would go up with each spot. I was very excited. I thought 120.00 was good for a free tournament, but 450.00.
I made it into the top 20 but the blinds were getting high and most of the players were all short stacked. I figured we would be down to 7 or 8 players in the matter of 30 minutes or less. People started going out right and left. I was in a position where I had to make something happen in the next two rounds. Then something happened, the hand before my BB was really slow played all the way to the river. Right as I was getting ready to put my chips out the blind buzzer went off and the blinds went up to 10000/20000. I only had 25000 chips left! 5000/10000 was not too bad but wow, I needed a miracle BB. I did not look at my cards. One person called and it was folded to me. It was make or break time. I called my last 5000 all in and he called and turned over AQ. I showed K8 and the flop came out A 7 A. The turn was a Q and my final table hopes were crushed as I went out in 13th place. In all actuality I was very happy to make it to that point as I was very card dead all day. I went to the cashiers cage and before they even started counting my money they annouced that the final table had been reached. If I could have just made it through that blind I would have made the final table. Oh well, 900 bones makes the trip well worth it. Not quite the 10000 seat with 4000 spending money they awarded 1st and 2nd but now I know I can run deep. I was glad I ended up 13th out of 240 players.
We stayed at the casino and played some slots and some 2 4 limit poker the rest of the day and headed home. I broke even on the rest of the games, so minus the hotel and gas to get there I was up 800.00 on the trip. I will sit that back for a trip to Vegas this October. Nothing like a free trip to Vegas!