I wish I had an exciting story to tell from my first live tournamnet but it was pretty much a pre-break bust. I played in the Bicycle $20 +$5 NL Hold ‘Em tournament last night and busted out early. I went over four complete orbits before getting a playable hand. Ok, I’ll admit I was playing very tight and tossing KJo to a raise and re-raise but I saw mostly Q3, 92, K4, etc. for four orbits. Heck, I would have taken a JTs UTG if I could have gotten it. 🙂 Finally, I get pocket aces. Big blind is $25 and I raise it up to $100 thinking that I don’t want to scare everybody out (just stealing the blinds would have been a waste at $25/$15). I get one caller. Flop comes mostly junk with a 10 high. I push all in and get called. I flip over AA and he flips up ATo. Anybody want to take a guess what came up on the turn? You guessed it, a 10! No ace on the river and I have to rebuy.
I guess I should feel somewhat complimented because two people who folded pre-flop to my $100 raise said that they would have played for $100 but that they knew I hadn’t played a hand all night and that if I was coming in it was with some solid cards.
So with my nice new stack of re-buy chips, I go another several orbits before getting 79s on the big blind. Flop comes 68T. A freakin’ straight on the flop. All In!!! I get one caller. He flips up JQ and he hits a 9 on the river.
Some things to point out: First, I’m not much of a NL player. I’m trying to learn the ins and outs playing $5 NL SnG games online. I can maybe see the first call with AT but the inside straight draw call just seems insane. Anybody have some advice on how they would have played these differently?
So I had an option to re-buy and the first break was coming up in about 5 minutes where I could have done an add-on and been back in ok position. I figured if I can’t win with pocket aces against AT or with a flopped straight, maybe it isn’t my night and I opted out and tried to find a good limit game.