My 1st Big Brick and MortarTournament

I thought I'd just write up the days events from here. They have an excellent wireless connection in the casino and I have my laptop, so we should be good.

I spent $330.00 to enter in this tournament. The last count I heard there were 434 entries, which created a total prize pool of $130,200.

The day started out slow for me. I wasn't getting good cards, but did manage to steal a few pots to keep myself alive. The only major pot I won in the first four hours is when my pocket sixes made trips on the flop. There were four players who saw the flop and I led out with a bet and all but one guy folded to me. I checked the turn and he checked back. After the river card fell, I bet out and the other guy folded A-6, face up. I mucked my hand and grinned at him, like I had stolen the pot. I took him out after the break when my pocket Aces went up against his A-K. He got a king on the turn, but no other help and he was gone.

At the first meal break, I was in 43rd place out of 96 people left. Two hours later, at the rest room break, I had moved up to 7th. By the time the money bubble broke and we got another short meal break; I had fallen to 29th out of 39 remaining players.

After the last meal break, I went card dead again. Nothing was going my way. I managed to win a couple of small pots without having to show down and a few people were knocked out and I found myself 17th in chips with 21 players left. The average stack was around 57K in chips. I had just over 12K and the leader had over 300K (about 25% of the chips in play). Then came the end.

A few hands after a restroom break, I was dealt pocket kings in the big blind. Blinds were at 1K/2K with a 200 ante. The chip leader raised from the one off of the button. I had 9100 in chips left and it was going to cost me 6K of that to call, so I pushed all-in. He calls and the cards are turned up. I am semi-relieved to see he has A-K off-suit. I just need to avoid one of the two remaining Aces in the deck to move up to around 25K in chips.

It took less than a minute, but seemed like an eternity. The flop was 6 - 10 - Q. He had picked up additional outs. Now any of 4 Jacks or the two Aces would beat me. The turn card was a 3; another bullet dodged. Then as the dealer was turning the river card face up, I knew my night was over. He hit an ace and I left the table finishing 21st. $1050.00 for my efforts.

All-in-all, I think I played good poker on the day for not having many quality starting hands. I'm probably lucky to have finished where I did. I'm exhausted, but am going to hang out here for a while longer to see if a friend makes the final table. He's currently in 4th place with about 125K in chips. The chip leader now has over 400K and there are 17 players left. The first four players control around 75% of the chips in play at this point in the event, so he should be in good shape

The tournament finally ended at 4:15am. Patrick, my buddy who was also in the tournament, just finished in 2nd place, winning slightly more than $19K. Not too bad for a guy who had never made a final table at a live tournament before. It's now 4:45am and I'm heading home.