Yesterday Heaven and took a trip up to Bell Gardens, California to play in the first event of the Bicycle Casino’s Stars and Stripes tournament series (a middle tournament series with buy-in’s ranging from $100 to $500 for each event). This particular event was $100+$25 (!) No Limit game online terlengkap.
On the upside, everyone who registered got a free Stars and Stripes hat so it was really $100+$25-$7 or so as MellowYellow from the Low Limit Forum pointed out.
The blind increases at this tournament were every 30 minutes and all 429 players started with 1000 chips. Heaven busted early when her straight on the turn was beaten by a boat on the river. I lasted until about 60/429 but still out of the money.
Two interesting hands came up. In the first when the blinds were 25-50 I raised in late position to 200T with QsJs. The BB, who I had covered by about 500T reraised to 500T (about a third of his stack at the time) and I called. The flop came As Ks 5c (!) and the BB instantly went all-in. I thought about this for a while. The instant all-in seemed like a move he had planned before ever seeing the flop so it could mean pretty much any pocket pair and maybe a hand like AK. Some of these hands are monsters on this flop but I had at least 12 outs to win and more if he had a hand like 99 or less. On the other hand I’d be down to 500T if I lost. After about 30 seconds I called the all-in because even though it was a gamble, with the 1050 already in the pot + my >40% draw to the nuts I felt it was a good time to gamble and get a larger than average stack. We turned up our hands and it turns out he flopped a set with 55 so it was off to the race. A turn Q and river Q left me with losing trips and a tiny stack.
I had to make a few all-in moves after this with Ax and won or chopped them all and managed to build my stack a big — enough to keep up with the blind increases for the most part when the final hand of the evening for me came up with blinds at 300-600 and 100 antes and seven players in the hand (the pot before any action was 1600). I had was in the SB with 2800 left and a stack smaller than me went all in. Another player right after him with a medium-large stack went all in and I looked at my cards and found 88. Now I’m looking for a spot to put my money in but of course calling my chips off after two people had gone all in before me. I thought about this hand for a little bit also, but my feeling was that the first person was desperate and they most likely had an Ax hand like A4o and I also felt the player that went all in after them knew that and had an Ace with a larger kicker or perhaps a medium or small pocket pair and wanted to shut out the rest of the actions and kill the blinds. If both players had an Ax hand my pocket 8’s were looking pretty good. I called. Player one turned over A9o and player two turned over AJo so my call definitely was worth it and if I won the hand I’d be an average chip stack. Unfortunately the flop came 9KT and the turn came a Q killing my hand entirely as the AJ made the nut straight. Still I was happy enough with that play and enjoyed playing live for a change.
