Poker Weekend, Part Two (pretty original, eh?)

After A Night of No-Limit in Naugatuck, Dave & I decided we would play in a tournament run by a friend of ours at a local private club...but first we stopped at Willie's steak house where another good friend is bartender. We sat at the bar and feasted on king-cut prime rib (my treat with last night's winnings)...beer for Dave, Captain & Cokes for me.

After eating and shooting the breeze with Dennis for a bit, we drove over to the club. A $40 buy-in (no rebuys) got you $5,000 in chips, and with blinds starting at $25-50, it was a good opportunity to hopefully outplay some of the beginners and build a nice stack. Of course, this didn't happen for me as I slowly bled off chips for the first couple hours. With blinds at $100-200, I limped in with K-2 of hearts from the small blind...only to be raised $1,000 more by the big blind, a guy with over $15,000 in chips who was constantly raising but showing down strong hands. I had him on a suited Ace & figured he was just trying to push me out of the hand, so I came back over the top with an all-in for $2,400 total. I knew I was probably getting the worst of it, but also figured that he would call, giving me approximately 3-to-2 odds on my last $2,200. I needed to double up soon or die a slow death so I gambled. He of course called and showed A-Q of spades, which made me a little more than a 3-to-2 'dog. None of the board cards hit either of us until the magical King on the river saved my bacon.

I faded back to about $4,300 in chips by the second break and was moved to Dave's table. Outside of Dave, and maybe one of the other players, the rest of this table consisted of hammered (not drunk, but hammered) club members. As long as I could remain patient through all of the slurring and pot policing ("your blind, sir....no, that's a $100 chip...the blind is $2,000...your turn, sir."), I thought I could politely remove them of their chips. In fact, I did make a nice rally up to about $12,000, capped by winning a checked-down $3,000 pot with King high.

Only trouble was my chip stack wasn't outpacing inflation...of the blinds, that is. With only $8,000 left and the $2,000-$4,000 blinds looming to my right, I decided to push all-in under-the-gun with A-8. There were only 14 of us left, with the top 9 getting paid. I could've folded in hopes that I could back into the money, but decided that I'd rather take a shot at doubling up and making it up higher on the prize list (1st was a little over $500). Juuuust my luck, the guy to my left called, everyone else folded, and he flipped over pocket Rockets.

Needless to say, the board was of no help and I was gone...but it was one of the few times that I wasn't salty about missing the money. I thought I made the smart play with the all-in, just unlucky that someone else had Aces. To his credit, I thought the guy played it well by just calling in hopes that he could sucker some others along for the ride. By now it was 12:30, and I decided to leave instead of waiting for a possible cash game to start up.