Tales of an Poker Grinder

Well I didn't win the Absolute Dream on Sunday. To start off the field wasn't as big as I thought it would be, only 575 players. Of course the bad news was only one person was going to walk away a winner, I would have loved to see 2 spots but there would have had to be a field of thousand players for that. Early on I got be cards, pocket aces, pocket kings, and pocket queens. The problem is in this tournament where you have a mix of players who got in for free and others who dropped $200 to play the play was very tight at the beginning. So my big hands all won but very little when the blinds are $10/$20 to $20/$40. I pretty much stayed up for the game for the first couple hours, never in the top chip leaders but I was holding my own winning small pots. The one thing was I had a guy at my table who won a freeroll to get in but had no idea what he was playing for. Early on he won a huge hand and moved into the top 5 chip leaders and now he was playing every hand. The problem was he was half way across the table from me so I couldn't attack him. He kept building his chips with loose crazy calls, even calling pre-flop all-in's with hands like 5 6 and getting lucky to win. Now of course he doubled me up a couple of times which was very nice, just wish I was closer to him to win more chips from him. So we get down to about the last 150 players and my worse nightmare comes true for any poker player. The chip leader of the tournament gets seated at my table and right to my left. Now anything I do has to go by him. And this guy just wasn't the chip leader for a little bit but the chip leader for a couple of hours. So I knew this was going to be tough.
Now the hand I hate the most. I'm on the button and everyone folds to me. I have ace 9 so I go all-in thinking as long as the chip leader doesn't have a hand I can pick up the blinds and ante. The blinds are $500/$1,000 with $100 ante. The chip leader folds and the big blind who if calls my all in is down to less than $2k in chips. This is another reason I made the all-in move. He calls and to my surprise he turns ove Jack 2 suited. Now I have never made a move out of line at least that I had to show down. The flop comes up 5 7 of hearts and a nine of diamonds. So I make top pair with the ace kicker. The turn brings another diamond, I don't even remember the card but I knew the river would bring another diamond to give this moron a flush. Sure enough the next diamond hits the board and I'm out in 109th place.
I've had Jack 2 suited beat me three times in major tournaments, twice online and one live one. All 3 times the player had no business calling my raises or all-in's. All 3 times I put those players in jeopardy of either getting knocked out or crippled. Just killer, my achilles heal Jack 2 suited. Oh well that's poker. Until the next tourney.

Well I haven't been blogged in a while and for good reason, I haven't been playing poker. In fact for two weeks I haven't played a hand of poker until tonight. I took 2nd in an online sit-n-go, so I still have it.
About 2 weeks ago I was off from work, doing the Daddy Daycare thing. I wasn't going to waste any money playing poker online while watching the kids so I played some freerolls, just for fun goofing off. I think freerolls are a waste of time if you have money to play with online, but they are good for players who are learning or have no money to play with. It's funny most of my Thursday night guys are playing these freerolls all the time now, I guess they have went broke. Anyways, so I'm playing freerolls and losing quickly of course, but I play this Absolute Dreams tourney. In the first 10 minutes I get dealt pocket kings and pocket aces and no have about 10,000 in chips and the chip leader. You know these freerolls people going all-in preflop with junk. Problem is they ran into me with those big cards which held up. From there I just played solid poker. When we got down to the final 3 tables with only 2 spots advancing to the Absolute Dreams Tourney on the 3rd of June. I would have really thought things would tighten up with 3 tables but no, before I knew it I was at the final table. I was maybe 7th in chips at this point. Once again thinking things would tighten up but the chip leader was knocking one guy out after another and I managed to win some hands to move up to 3rd in chips myself. But it didn't matter because the chip leader was working the table and before I knew it I took 2nd place.
So Sunday is my chance to go Pro!! Right now 470 players are entered in the $200 buy-in tourney. I got in for free. If I win this Absolute sponsors me at the WSOP Main Event, the Aruba Event, I think some WPT events, as well as the sites $150k Saturday tournament each week. This is my chance, my one shot, at least for now to become a professional player.

I've been so busy with family stuff and work I've had no time to really practice, but I've been reading and watching poker and I feel fresh and ready for this one.

I'll make a post of how I did once the tourney is over with.