I have a couple of tournament wins to talk about since my last post in late October...
1. I finished first in Full Tilit Poker's "Bad Bead on Cancer" charity tourney on November 15 for about $300 and donated 1/3 of that to the charity. It was a $5+$5 buy-in ($5 to the prize pool, $5 to charity) with 314 entrants.
http://twitterpokertour.com/coolwhip-corner/the-2nd-tpt-charity-event-benefiting-bad-beat-on-cancer-another-success/
This one was especially nice since I get the opportunity to appear in a DeucesCracked video this year. Jay Rosenkrantz asked me to contact him in late January, which is... ummm... right about now!... I hope to blog about that sometime in February. In fact, I didn't realize about this "bonus prize" until Geoff Manning mentioned it in the chat box at the final table.
2. I took first in Keith Switzer's home game in Livermore on January 15. Ironically, I had played in about 4 or 5 of Keith's tourneys before (typically a field of 18 to 27)... and I had never come close to sniffing the final table. But on this night, I had lady luck on my side... I flopped 3 sets w/ small pocket pairs during the tourney:
- With 66 to take a large pot early on... Barry tried a river bluff on a missed flush draw... poor guy... everyone was teasing him when he folded for about 30 more chips in a 500 chip pot.
- With 44 to take a medium-sized pot early on.
- Then 22 when I got heads up w/ Father Bill's son, Bryan... that doubled me up.
With the blinds sky high at 100/200, Bryan and I got all of the chips in the middle on the last hand... KQ > K7.
But the biggest hand of the night came when we were down to 5-handed play. I raised 3x from the cutoff w/ 88 and Keith called from the button. The flop came 994. I checked and Keith went all-in. He had me covered.
I had never agonized over a hand so long before. I couldn't see Keith shoving w/ a 9, so that led me to believe he either had two overs or a pocket pair. I've seen him flat call pre-flop w/ KK before... he's a tough, sneaky player... but something in his body language made me think he didn't want a call... I asked him what 3rd place received and he said $40 (which was a $20 profit)... I was also getting kinda low on chips so I didn't want to play weak and go for 3rd place money... I wanted first... and my hunch was kinda right about a low pocket pair... I called and he turned over A4.
