Good tournament results in May

May is a good month for me so far. After winning the torurnament at the Poker-Club I cashed a few days later online. Made a 4th place (out of 254) in one of the FullTilt $24+2 Deep-Stacks for a nice $518 payday (boosting my ROI for the challenge to 70%). Most remarkable that I had a huge comback at the end. Already ITM (but just for $57) I was forced to push all-in with K9 (otherwise I would have been blinded away the next hand). My hand survived against AK and I got some room to move again. This was my last "lucky" hand in this tournament because from there (with about 21 players left) I went on a huge run of decent to good cards that made me third in chips. Finally my run was stopped as my JJ ran into AK. No reason to complain about the result. Although winning that particular hand would have allowed me to rally for first place (but hell, you can't be lucky everytime).

Last night I played the $100-Freezout at the Poker-Club in Salzburg again. 35 players tried to make it to the last five and into the money. This tournament was somewhat strange for me as I played just two hands in the early beginning and after that I was totally card dead for almost 2 hours (and till we were down to around 18 players). Luckily I increased my stack from the initial 10,000 to 18,000 with these two hands.

In the first of these two hands I hit a Q on the board with AQ. A calling station paid me off as he thought his QJ could be good too. The second was AA on a semi-scary board. The board contained no flush- or straight-draws and only one facecard (a Queen). But the way people played there was still a possibility I ran into two pairs of another callingstation. Even my strong bets couldn't push him from the hand. A second 9 paired the board. Usually I get very nervous because of possible Full-Houses in that situation. But unless he was holding Q9 I assumed that instead his two pairs now got counterfeit and my AA would be good anyway. Therefore I pushed all-in with my remaining 7,000 (into an 11,000 pot). He thought for a long time (o.k., no Full House) and finally folded. I decided not to show my hand and mucked my Aces after receiving the pot.

As said before from there I was card dead for a long time. Finally I went lucky again as I raised to 3,000 (500/1,000 blinds) from MP with A8s. A player in LP made it 5,000 to go and was all-in. EP limper called the bet. I was sure being behind but I only had to pay another 2,000 in a big pot and hoped that we would check it down. That's what happend and I got the best of it. The Ace on the flop was enough to be ahead of the EP player. But the all-in player later showed AK. So I was happy that an 8 on the river busted him and gave me a big pot. Now I had plenty of chips to make some moves. In one of them I was able to push a player from his hand with 88 at a scary board. He flashed TT before he mucked his hand.

As the final table was there I got into one of the worst seats: UTG. To pay the blinds just one round later with an average stack of 35,000 (2,000/4,000 blinds) wasn't very exciting. But exciting was the hand I received in that first round: AA! I bet 12,000 and I collected the blinds. Should I have slow-played them? I don't think so. Due to the chip distribution we could lose easily 2-3 players before the blinds came around again. And that was exactly what happend. Quite fast we were down to the bubble with 6 players. Unfortunately I had not played a single hand and was down to 20,000 chips as this situation happend: I was on the button. The player to my left had only about 5,000 chips left (4,000/8,000 blinds) and would have been forced to be all-in when the blinds are back to him. In this spot I received AJs. Everybody folded to me. Tough decision ... waiting if he would be blinded away or pusing all-in? I figured that 20,000 still could be a big enough bet to make the blinds fold (SB was short too and BB had about 50,000). SB folded and BB called (ouch!). But he showed T5 and I doubled up. Now it was an easy wait. With 5th place money secured I pushed all-in from the button again with my last 16,000 chips. The BB called (and this time he got the right odds for a call). My QJ was up against J5 of spades. I definately didn't like to see two spades on the flop. Turn was blank. But the River completed his flush. Still a nice $258 payday for 5th place.