The "Second Chance Tournament"

While I was around to wait for a $120 SnG they announced the $175+25 "Second Chance Tournament" to start at 5pm. This tournament is called "Second Chance" as it is a daily tournament basically created for those who dropped out early in each days main event. The blind levels are "only" 30 minutes because it is created to be over by midnight.

I took a shot at this one with a 125 players total. Had a nice run early during the first level but couldn't catch up and wasn't able to play a lot of hands for the next two levels. Slowly my average stack started to shrink and I was down to 10-15 BB's. Still no good cards. For the next 4 hours I managed to hang in with just two choices: Either fold or move-all-in. It was unbelivable. I thought I was out with about 60 left but still in, down to 50 ... 30 ... 20. I never came out of the hole but managed to stay in the game with some great all-ins and tough laydowns.
Two of the most remarkable Hands: All-in with KK vs AQ, flopping a set and making quads on the river. And the overkill hand: All-in with QJs and got called by an almost equal stack with AA. Cracked and busted him with two Q's on the flop for a set that even improved to quads on the turn. I really felt sorry for that guy ... but he took it in a great way. BTW - he gave me a tough bad beat about an hour earlier. So we are even now ;-)
Finally my luck run out: With 5500 chips left and Blinds 800/1600 (200 Ante) I found 88 UTG and raised all-in. It was folded to the SB who called with AK. Unfortunatly he caught two aces and I was out 11th of 125. Unfortuntaly they paid only 9 (from $700 - $8000). I was somewhat dissapointed to get eliminated here getting nothing after 5,5h but I was happy that I could stay that long. It was a great experience and I learnt a lot.

Playing tournaments is a lot of fun and I start to think if I am more into the tournament than the cash game thing. It just seems that tournaments fit my style of playing much more. No decision yet.

While we were playing they had the "Triple Draw Lowball" running. Don't ask me about the rules (I only know it's some kind of draw poker). This style usually doesn't get much players but is loved by the more experienced players for some reason. They had 27 players - which was one of the biggest fields for a WSOPC event in that category - with one notable pro: Robert Williamson III.

It's now breakfast time here and after breakfast I will tr to play another satellite...