The final countdwon

The family is coming back from their camping summer and I had one last day of poker. I decided to play in a local charity tournament. It was $125 and it 80 players.

It was "deep stack", but now I truly understand why players are now dissing on the "deep stack" label. Yes, it was deep stacked, but there are TWO big issues.

1. The early levels are all donkey levels with bad players willing to shove 10k on a flush draw.

2. The later levels are way escalated to make up for the early ones and thus at the end it turns into a WPT TV type event with everyone shoving or folding.

In this case, both this MTT turned out to be the CASE STUDY for the above complaints.

I made two mistakes in the tournament. The first was making a $1k river call when I flopped a set on a all heart board. The BB bet every street and made a bet big enough on the river, that I knew he had it. I called anyway to see Th4h. No blame on anyone by myself.

I played very well after that and was finally rewarded with an opportunity. I have KK Utg and I make it 3x BB. But its early and Utg+2 calls, MP calls, MP Calls and my KK is looking in bad shape. Suddenly, the Hijack re-raises! I have a stack of like $8k and the pot is now about $9k. I make a grand gesture of counting the pot, re-counting my stack, and then saying out-loud "There is already 9k out there". I move in for $8k. The first called is all-in now (but he was very short stacked and so it almost did not matter). Folds back to the re-raiser who has me covered. He thinks for a while and decides because of my speech that I must have AK and calls with 99. A king in the door and a king on the river and Dem's Quad's Bitches!
99. Gez. Bad.

I bleed alot of chips for the next hour. I had some good starting hands, but not one panned out and I folded them all post-flop. I was just unable to get chips. I was all the way back down to 12k when I raise with AQ and flop the straight. The TAG on my right flopped a set of Kings. They money goes in and I show the nuts on the turn and dodge the board pairing on the river.

Just before the next break, I make my second mistake. I CALL a raise from the SB with 88. Now I have 37k, the raise is to 3k and I call OOP with a middle pair for 10%. A third person tags along (limp-call) and the flop is J34. Here is my problem. This guy always bets out when he hits top pair. And he hits top pair ALOT. I have gone broke in this situation before, and now with two opponents, I got to figure out who has the Jack? The pot is like $9k. What can I bet here? Two checks to the original raiser, who bets 9k. Ugh. I put myself in this bad position. I fold.

I will make no further mistakes.

24 or so left and money weighted to top 3. A shorter stack shoves UTG+1 (a real talked) and it folds to me in the BB with TT. Now UTG+1 is a special donkey place. When bad players have less than average, they feel this need to shove BEFORE the blinds comes up. A9 is an easy hand to put him on here. Still it was $34k and I had $45k. But who plays for 9th, right? I CALL!!! He has AQ and the board is a gut tearing
KQ3... Ugh, this sucks
T... yeah, I made a set
J AYKM?

and now I am short stacked.

Never say die. I play short stack like a monster. I steal, I abuse and I take races. I am back to $35k when there are 14 left and some starts a chop discussion. Its late and the blinds are now ridiculous compared to the stacks (All M=5). One buy does not want to do it, 13 others do.

I make a button steal and get called from the SB. The blinds were 4k/8k and I have $35k. I was stealing with ATC if it folded to me on the button, which it did. In this case, I had A6. I am scared when I see QQ. An ace in the door and now I have $70k with 13 left and he have a break. I take the time to casually explain to the no voter that he also has 90k (much worse than it appears he realized.) and that with the new blinds of $6k/$12k, he really only had 5 rounds of play and his equity was shot. I think he liked my presentation and changed his vote to YES. We return from the break to chop and everyone gets 5th place money.

But hold the phone. The poker room wont allow us to chop?

Discussions start, some bordering on yelling. A guy demands to see the posted rules. We are forced to start playing again and this time I am stealing much less. I am biding my time a bit like a sit n go. One of the managers is reading the ruling to the most vocal player in regards to the chop. Finally, he says, "lets just all go all in and then who can complain?". The room manager was not happy, but decided to tell us not to talk about it. Well, the train had left the station, so next hand all the money went in. (I made a straight with 8T and become the representative from our table.) We repeated the process one more time and 13 players chopped. The blinds when we quit? 7k/14k. Average chips stack? 36k.

I wrap it up with a win and some cash. What more could I ask for?