HAND OF THE DAY: 09.06.08

$109 MTT; I got some chips early, stalled for awhile, then when the antes kicked in, I tried to steal whenever the situation looked decent. Moments ago, I open-raised from the small blind then called a reraise with K-6. I got lucky enough to hit trip sixes on the flop and felted the big blind who had Q-Q for a $12k pot. Two hands later, with the player on the button sitting out, I open-raise with J-9 and get called by the small blind who has a $14k stack:

POT: $2325
FLOP: Td-8c-7c
ACTION: B ($1200) / R ($3600) / R ($12.2k all-in) / C
ANALYSIS: Okay, nothing terribly surprising here as the hand plays itself when you flop the joint. The surprising thing is that my opponent shows A-K. Rather than pop it up preflop, he decides to slowplay Big Slick. I suppose if I have A-J and an ace comes, then he looks like a genius when we get into a raising war. When he misses the flop, however, I think his hand plays better as a check-raise than a lead-out. Once I raise him, with that board, he should have cursed his luck and mucked. Thankfully for me, he decided to represent a monster while I was harboring the nuts. It goes to show you that a big part of winning poker is just avoiding the total collapse of reason. I am guilty of making bad bluffs often at this stage in tournaments. I usually wind up muttering to myself "bluff into weakness, not strength." This player had enough chips to coast for awhile. It is okay to sometimes slowplay big cards in a situation where you are not expected to have such a strong hand, but you must be prepared to get away cheaply if the other guy indicates that he's got ace-high beat. I benefitted by the combination fortuitous flop and opponent's catastophic blunder, vaulting me into the chip lead.

I went on to make the final table as the chip leader. I lost a few hands in a row and became the short stack but I never gave up and I waited for my rush. Two hands in particular helped me out tremendously: I min-raised from utg with A-A and got two callers. I flopped a set and waited until the turn to make my move. It wouldn't have mattered as one of my opponents had flopped an underset so it was just a matter of time until the chips went in. Later, with five players remaining, I called an all-in and was delighted to have him dominated A-9 > A-7. The flop came 7-5-2 and I figured my luck had run out until the 6/8 peeled off to bring justice. I had more than half the chips four-handed and the same scenario played out when I busted the fourth guy. I had the A-8 > A-6 and he flopped the pair before I rivered the straight. First you have to play perfectly, then you have to avoid getting unlucky. It was all working for me during this event. I went into heads-up play with a modest chip lead. I lost the lead then got it back, then at 2:30 AM PST, we decided to chop it up evenly: $8560.