Early on, I just played it tight, play my premium hands, look for a way to extract some chips. I end up making a move with A-J suited, raising it to 4x the BB, with the blinds still only being 25/50. I then face a re-raise, and another player goes all in for his remaining 1000 chips. I at least made the right decision to fold my A-J, since I was facing KK and TT. The tens actually ended up sucking out, which was a theme of this tournament all the way through.
I also notice Yabi is in this tournament, seated at another table. The majority of the low blinds portion of the tournament goes by fairly uneventful, with me just making position plays and stealing small pots when I can.
About two-thirds of the way through the tournament, I am dealt Q-Q, and I don't know whether or not I should be excited. Blinds are 100-200 and I am under the gun with 2500 chips. Not the optimal position, so I need to make my point and buy A-junk and K-junk out of this hand. I raise it 500 to go, and the small blind calls me. Flop comes 9-7-3. I bet 750 into the pot of 1200, and the guy pushes all in. I call with top pair to find he was on a pocket pair of tens. Don't blame the guy for shoving this hand, in his mind he had top pair. A few nice takedowns later, I am sitting with 9000+ chips as the chip leader.
I take a look at Yabi's position to see that he is low on chips, only 300 to be exact. But I give him credit for fighting his way through the pack to meet me at the final table. I make it there at the chip leader, while he limps on in with the small stack.
After losing a couple tough hands, I'm able to triple up by - guess what - sucking out! I raise with A-10, 9-9 calls, K-J shoves, I smell a fish and call, and then 9-9 comes all in as well. I was very lucky to hit this hand, or I would have been eliminated.
Once the bubble was burst, the action really heated up. I was able to make some plays and scoop some blinds because I could tell how tight the table was before the bubble was eliminated. Afterwards was another story, as people were making moves left and right. We get down to 3 players, and then I get a nice premium hand. I raise just over the minimum, my opponent shoves. I jump for joy and call, as the rat has gone for the cheese.
Needless to say, heads up didn't last long either. Yeah, I sucked out for sure, but it was a nice feeling after the many times I got sucked out on in this tournament. Picture says it all.
Thanks again to Yabi for taking the pictures and sending to me. The last thing I expected to be doing tonight was creating and writing on a blog, so in the future I'll be better prepared with pics and hand analysis.
Cheers,
Sana
