Played in 3 different tourneys on PokerStars today and managed to cash in two of them, coming in the top 5% of the field both times.
The first one was the weekly VIP $20,000 freeroll, which had about 3600 entrants and a 10-minute-per-round blind structure, another pseudo-turbo as it were. The key hand for me in that tourney occurred just before the money bubble burst. With 300/600 blinds and a stack of around 15000 chips, I raised to 1800 with QQ and got min-reraised to 3000 by a player who had about 12000 chips. I called, the flop came Queen-high, I checked, he bet 4200, and I check-raised him all-in, figuring that he had to have AA or KK and couldn't fold. He called, and I cracked Aces. I played pretty solidly after that, finishing in 144th for a "free" $22.
The second tourney was $7 pot-limit HE, and I suffered an early defeat in that one. I twice reraised limpers with Ace-rag and suffered the consequences of my "tricky" play, although in the second case the guy on my left called my reraise with only pocket 4's and managed to flop trips while I was trying to represent top two pairs. Sigh.
I also played in a $10 + one rebuy + one add-on (which started at the same time as the $7 PL) and managed to win a big pot early which gave me excellent momentum for remainder of the first hour. I finished hour one with close to 8000 chips (having started with 3000 after taking the rebuy), and added on the extra 2k. Play slowed down a bit in the second hour, as the blinds were still small compared to stack sizes, and I was able to use my table chip lead to take down a lot of pots. In the third hour, I twice had monster hands back-to-back, once calling an all-in with AK and flopping Broadway and then winning with QQ, and later raising with KK twice in a row and both times having a caller fold to my flop bet. Shortly after the Kings really beefed up my stack, however, I lost about half my chips trying to steal a couple more pots pre-flop and that, combined with rapidly escalating blinds, put me back into "all-in or fold" territory, where I remained until my ouster in 30th place, which was good for almost $67. I'm really pleased with my play as of late, as I really haven't been making any significant mistakes, and feel like I am this close to sitting at another final table.
The first one was the weekly VIP $20,000 freeroll, which had about 3600 entrants and a 10-minute-per-round blind structure, another pseudo-turbo as it were. The key hand for me in that tourney occurred just before the money bubble burst. With 300/600 blinds and a stack of around 15000 chips, I raised to 1800 with QQ and got min-reraised to 3000 by a player who had about 12000 chips. I called, the flop came Queen-high, I checked, he bet 4200, and I check-raised him all-in, figuring that he had to have AA or KK and couldn't fold. He called, and I cracked Aces. I played pretty solidly after that, finishing in 144th for a "free" $22.
The second tourney was $7 pot-limit HE, and I suffered an early defeat in that one. I twice reraised limpers with Ace-rag and suffered the consequences of my "tricky" play, although in the second case the guy on my left called my reraise with only pocket 4's and managed to flop trips while I was trying to represent top two pairs. Sigh.
I also played in a $10 + one rebuy + one add-on (which started at the same time as the $7 PL) and managed to win a big pot early which gave me excellent momentum for remainder of the first hour. I finished hour one with close to 8000 chips (having started with 3000 after taking the rebuy), and added on the extra 2k. Play slowed down a bit in the second hour, as the blinds were still small compared to stack sizes, and I was able to use my table chip lead to take down a lot of pots. In the third hour, I twice had monster hands back-to-back, once calling an all-in with AK and flopping Broadway and then winning with QQ, and later raising with KK twice in a row and both times having a caller fold to my flop bet. Shortly after the Kings really beefed up my stack, however, I lost about half my chips trying to steal a couple more pots pre-flop and that, combined with rapidly escalating blinds, put me back into "all-in or fold" territory, where I remained until my ouster in 30th place, which was good for almost $67. I'm really pleased with my play as of late, as I really haven't been making any significant mistakes, and feel like I am this close to sitting at another final table.
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