Poker Report

My third tourney date was rather like the second- a little bit better than the time before, and another nice lesson on the game was learned.

My play was generally very sound. This time, I finished eighth overall, good for 200 points. I'm climbing the ladder, but by baby steps. I'll need that quantum leap next time. Scoreboard. I'm still in 15th. Only the top five advance to an invitational tourney.

I stuck with my game plan and it paid off. Going into the final table, I was in third place. Problem was, the chip leader had 4x more chips than me, and I only had about 2x those at the bottom. I had a real opportunity to surge ahead, but I messed it up.

Until the final table is formed, the players deal their own hands. At the final table, ten players were crushed together along with a dealer. On the second hand, I lost sight of the fact that the dealer was not a player. I was dealt pocket sixes while being the big blind. The flop turned up another six. I was excited. Since I was sitting to the left of the dealer and I wanted to just capture the blinds and the first round of bets, I called all-in. Problem was, I was out of sequence. The action was three players ahead of me. Some of them were going to bet, but they quickly folded up. Exposed, I went all-in anyway and picked up the pot. Had I been aware of the sequence, I would have captured at least an extra 1,000 or so chips.

Lesson: PAY ATTENTION TO SEQUENCE!

From there on, it was downhill. A player looking to leave the table because his wife was ready to go started playing every hand all-in. I played a K-Q suited against his all-in 3-7 off-suit. Hard to feel bad about that, right? Here comes the flop. Two 3s and a 7. Nuts! What can you do? It cut my chip stack by two-thirds, and I limped through the rest of my limited time at the final table.