Finally, a final table

After the debacle over a week ago, things are starting to come together. After being pleased with my play last Thursday night at the Summer Open Showdown, I decided to follow up with that momentum by stopping in Atlantic City on my way home from the beach on Sunday and play in the 2:00PM $85+$15 at the Showboat. There was total of 65 players.

It's interesting because I'm trying to figure what to blog about since in the past, I could always recall the bad beats or the hands that decimated my stack, but since I made the final table and we chopped the pot 10 ways, there aren't too many significant hands to recall.

For starters was the fact we chopped the pot 10 ways. It was actually the chip leader's idea since he was trying to catch a bus home back to Staten Island and his friends were sitting around waiting for him. With the chop, we each took home more than what 4th place would have taken home. I had 77K in chips, the average stack was about 65K, and I was starting in the big blind with blinds at 6000/12000, so I can't complain too much except that I would have liked to get some more hands in.

I started off well, getting great cards and picking up a lot of pots early. I had the chip lead at my table for about 3/4 the time I was there. There was one player who was kind of quiet, but once the blinds started to increase, he starting pushing the action by re-raising all in numerous times. He caught me a couple of times with decent hands after I raised, but not with hands that I would stake my tournament life on, so I ended up folding.

I had about 20K left in the BB and tried to steal the blinds with A2 offsuit by pushing all in. Unfortunately, the BB called with pocket queens. The flop was no immediate help, but did produce 2 spades and I had the ace. The turn brought another spade giving me 12 outs on the river. I yelled for a spade, but instead I got another ace which was good enough to double me up.

Another hand which ate at me was when I was dealt AJ in late position. 6 players at the table and the aforementioned "all in" player with a smooth call in early position. Blinds at 2000/4000 and I raise to 13K. He immediately goes all in and I go into the tank. AJ is not a terrible hand but the smooth call and re-raise had me concerned that he had a high pocket pair. If I call I'm at risk for all of my chips and that close to the final table I lay it down, announcing I had him with pocket queens. He told me later he had KQ.

There were a couple of bizarre events that happened at my table. One involved a player with a significant stack who had just gotten moved to my table, slice his leg on the dealers tip box. Because he was bleeding and touching chips, they made him leave with security to go to first aid before he can play again, and then replaced all his chips.

Another bizarre occurrence was when some cocky young kid got moved to the seat next to me. He was constantly talking and bitching and complaining about something. When we got down to 11 people, 1 away from the final table, he decided to take his sweet ass time and wouldn't even look at his cards until someone called clock. Now I understand what he was doing and I didn't necessarily have a problem with it, except that the kid was such an asshole. So he survived an all-in at one point and doubled up his stack and in the process dropped the F Bomb in front of the floor manager who then gave him a 10 minute penalty. The 5 remaining players at our table then decided to basically fold every hand for 10 minutes, so we'd each get our blinds back, in order to weaken his stack and attempt to blind him out. It was kind of comical listening to the kid bitch and complain from the rail for 10 minutes because he could see what we were doing. He had too many chips, but we did take 2 of his big and small blinds in the process. Unfortunately, he survived to the final table and almost incurred the wrath of everyone because when we were all discussing a chop during the break, he was the only one who wanted to play on and of course was being a dick about it. After 5 minutes he did agree to the chop. I think all 9 players wanted to take him out on the boardwalk and beat the crap out of him.

Anyway, less than 10 days until Vegas. I'll most likely play a couple of more times this weekend beforehand and I'll keep everyone updated right here, hopefully keeping some momentum.