By Mr_Taterhead on February 17th, 2008 (more posts by author)

I have primarily been playing uNL cash games on the internet for the last year or so and I have faired pretty well. I usually don’t have the 5-6 hours on average that it takes to play a tourney. I only have a couple of hours a night that I am able to dedicate to poker. Between being a full time accountant and a full time dad to a newborn, I just don’t have the time. I decided last week that if I ever wanted to get out of the 5x5 cubicle that I spend 40hrs a week in, I was going to have to play in some bigger cash games or make a few nice scores in a couple tourneys. Since I have been running pretty bad at uNL cash games this month I decided that taking a couple of shots at some bigger NL games was probably a bad idea, so this weekend I made a conceded effort to play a couple of tourneys on Stars.

On Friday night I played 2 tourneys. I played the $10r and a $15 freeze out on ‘Stars and I ended up making the final table of the freeze out. Beginners luck???? I had 17K in chips after the add-on at the first break in the rebuy and I actually ran that up to ~$30K until I ran QQ into KK in a $60K pot in the second hour and just like that I was gone. So much for that. I am now focused 100% on the freeze out where I have an above average stack. I pretty much play ABC poker until we bust the money bubble and then I start catching cards left and right. I made it to the final table and I can’t catch a card that is higher than a 5. I am bleeding chips left and right. I end up making a bad preflop decision and try and steal some blinds with Q-7 and when the SB shoves over the top of me I have to make a decision. I know I am beat, but I look at the #s and I am getting close to 4-1, so I make the “right” play and ship some more chips into the pot, but unfortunately I can’t sweat A3c. BAH. I end up having to shove 9-10o on the CO and when someone else re-shoved I knew I was toast. The guys KK dominated my 9-10, but the flop revealed both a 9 and a 10 I got a little giddy. Man it feels good to suck out once in awhile!!!! To bad a K spiked on the turn. GG Mr_Taterhead. Regardless of the variance that tourneys entail I think I am in love again.

Wish me luck.