We Arrive

Barry and I showed up for the 8:00 tournament at nearly 9:00. There had been only 12 entries. It seems the slow economy has hit Las Vegas pretty hard. We paid our entry fee and took our seats at the final table with $4000 with the blinds at $100 and $200. It seemed we walked in and took over. Barry’s first hand got him all in against the chip leader, doubling him up. Next hand, I increased my stack by half and on the third hand Barry busts a player making him the new chip leader. Ah, but the Poker gods are a fickle lot. I get AK on the button, raise and get no callers. Next hand I get it again, raise, get a caller, a white haired grandma who also calls my bluff when I miss the flop and beats me with a middle pair. Then I lose a hand when I have to fold my top pair when it looks like I am outkicked.  As a result I am short stacked. By that time there were five left. This tournament will pay three places.

Two big stacks clash and pocket aces hold up to create a new chip leader. Desperate to get enough chips to last a few orbits, I decide to try to steal the blinds from my position on the button. The newly crowned chip leader was in the big blind. He hadn’t yet stacked up his chips from the previous hand when he peeks down and sees two black jacks and calls my all-in raise. End of tournament for me.

Barry on the other hand is sitting pretty good in second place against the chip leader, a fortyish guy in a button down shirt, and the white haired grandma who never raises and seems to call anything if she hits any pair. Barry loses a couple small pots to her when he just can’t hit. Then he finds AK on the button, goes all in and it’s Grandma’s turn to find pocket jacks in the big blind. She flops a third jack and Barry is crippled. A few hands later Barry is out in third place. Third place paid over $100, so he didn’t do too badly.

We moved over to the cash table and played a little $1 - $2 for an hour or two. Barry got busted when his big pair ran into a Frenchman with pocket aces. I was able to stay just shy of even for quite a while before picking up pocket sevens. I had noticed that the players in the seven and eight seats were willing to put all their chips in the pot with just one pair. This can be fatal in No Limit Hold’em. The flop came 7-8-Q giving me a set of three sevens and the eight seat bet out.  I made a small raise and he called. The Turn card looked like it didn’t help anyone, so when he bet I raised enough that it took all of his chips to call. The pot was about $150. He flipped over an ace and an eight and he was drawing dead on the river. Even if he caught an eight, he would make Three-of-a-Kind-Eights but I would have a Full House, 777-88. After raking in that pot I played a few extremely conservative hands and racked up my chips, happy to leave with a small profit for the evening.