Played some poker this weekend.
(Big surprise huh?)

Friday and Saturday I played live, and Sunday online.
Saturday was rough.

They had a good turn out.
There were 70+ people at this game.
(A $50 buy-in tourney)

Seven tables PLUS several people had to wait for someone to go out before they could even start. I didn’t do real well, but it was maddening because I really felt like I was playing my best poker. I was reading everyone at the table pretty much dead on.

(So nobody was intimidating me.)

I was noticing everything at the table.
My focus was much better than usual.
But the cards just would not come.
I got squat all night.

I hung around and made it down to the 4 table mark when I FINALLY got a pair.
A pair of 7s

I was on the high end of short stacked.
Blinds were set to go up soon.
I was in late position and there was one limper in the pot.
If I played the sevens I’d rather not get a caller.
I’d rather just steal the blinds.
So I pushed ALL-IN.

My hope was that the two blinds would fold, and so would the limper.
If he didn’t fold I figured he had AJ or something and I’d be in the lead of a very close race.

As it turns out…

One of the blinds called my ALL-IN and the limper did too.
I thought “Two? Two callers? I’m am so screwed!”

When we turned the cards over one guy had AQ the other AK.
Not as bad as I had feared, and I was pretty darn close when I put the limper on a hand.

So here I am statistically ahead at this point … and my callers are sharing aces so they don’t have as many outs.

Suddenly I’m thinking I may triple up here!

Nope.

An Ace hits on the turn and I’m out.

Jana was still in and did pretty well.
She ended up two away from the final table.
She played really well but got a couple tough beats and fought back to hang in there for quite a while.

Sunday night I played an online tourney and did ok.

There were 596 players.
The buy in was 18 bucks.
I made a dumb move at the end.
Had I sat back and passed on that hand I could have made it to the final table.

I was above average on the chip stack.
But I decided to play to win Vs. play not to lose… and tried to bully with a semi bluff.
Didn’t work.
In the end I got 15th place and turned 18 bucks into 100.

Not the 1st place I was hoping for…
But an “In The Money” finish with a decent sized crowd almost makes up for Saturday.

… Almost