Poker at the Guadelupe

Well, I finally managed to finish in the money at one of Greg and Holli’s tourneys.  Last Saturday they managed to fill up all ten seats for a NLHE tourney.  This time I was finally getting dealt some playable hands, not premium hands, but playable.  And, this time, I was hitting.  Flops, turns and especially rivers!  Got my money in against some aggressive players a few times with the worst hand, but plenty of outs and won all but one hand.  One hand I had top pair and came over the top of a short stack, who called with bottom two, but the board paired to counterfeit his hand.  When it was down to heads up, Brad had the chip lead and put me all in with his wired fours.  I thought about it and knowing how aggressive he is (he was raising every hand heads up) I figured I needed to take a chance and double up to take the chip lead.  I called with J, 9 suited and hit a nine on the river.  The final hand I had 5, 3 off and he went all in on the turn I think.  I had a pair of threes and an open-ended straight draw and called.  He had a pair of sixes, but the river brought a 5 giving me two pair and the win.  Lucky, I admit, but I’ll take it for sure!!

SO CLOSE, YET SO FAR

Well, yesterday I played in the Daniel Negreanu/Bahamas freeroll on PokerStars.  There ended up being over 9200 players at the start of the tourney.  The top 200 finishers make it to the Round 2 tourney.  After about 5 hours or so, I busted out in 36th place, securing my seat to the round 2 tourney today.  (And five whole dollars to boot!) 

So, today at noon I sit down for the round 2 thing which has only 2700 players.  I was expecting to bust out fairly early, and I had a big breakfast so I wasn’t too worried about missing lunch.  However, I kept on increasing my stack while trying to avoid big confrontations.  Long story short, after about six hours, I made it to the final table of 10 as the short stack.  With some good play and luck of course, I was able to take the chip lead with only 3 other players left.  After a few hands I surrendered the chip lead, and all four players were pretty even with between 800,000 and 1.4 million chips.  All I had to do was knock off three more players and I would be going to the Bahamas to play against Kid Poker at the Pokerstars Carribean Adventure.  Unfortunately, I made a big mistake and pushed all in with A-2 and got called by A-K.  He had me covered and I was out.  I did get $153 for my efforts so maybe I can grow that a bit!

Poker night!

We finally hosted another Poker night last Friday.  (It has been way too long!)  We only had six in the tourney, but somehow managed to drink three bottles of red wine, a smattering of cold beers and maybe a little too much good Old No. 7.  Jen H. and her friend Scott attended for the first time and although Jen claimed to have very little experience on the felt, she jumped out to a big chip lead in the beginning!  I managed to make a healthy comeback, after seeing my starting stack of $1500 reduced to about $300 by a somewhat cold deck.  I was getting dealt, but not hitting anything and losing the pots I did showdown with.  Everyone hung in there without having to re-buy, but Linda, Bill and I made it to the money.  Linda bowed out in 3rd place and after too many glasses of Jack, and then Single Barrel Jack, Bill and I agreed to go all-in blind and Bill won the hand and the tourney!  All in all, another fun poker night filled with conversation and drinking, and a little bit of poker.  I also got to break-in my new KEM Arrow cards.  These are the black and gold, poker sized with super index.  A handsome card indeed!