Thursday at Startime

My goal tonight was to make sure I made it to the final table so I could get more points towards the final tournament on May 12. After finishing 13th on Tuesday and Wednesday, I'm sure many of my loyal readers were rooting for me to make it a 13th place Trifecta this week. Bastards.

About 45 minutes into the tournament tonight, I limped in with a K8o. The flop was 88x. I checked, the guy to my left checked, and an older guy across from me went all in. I called and turned up my K8 without realizing the guy to my left hadn't had a chance to do anything yet. I quickly grabbed my cards and apologized. The guy still called because, he later revealed, he thought my 8 was a 5 since the lighting wasn't so good at the table. That left him with about 4 chips. The turn was an 8! I think that was the first time at live games in Atlanta I've had 4 of a kind. I took down a very nice pot with that.

I made the final table of 8 people, and tightened up a lot. I threw away several A6 and K9. At one point a British guy across the table went all in after the flop. I had 4 spades at that point with two cards to come. I had him covered, but if I lost I would have been down to about 2500 in chips and only would have had about 2 orbits with the blinds at 400/800. I thought really hard about it. I agonized over it. I threw it away.

We do a lot of squirrel hunting at these games since we're mostly just there to have fun. We ran the next burn/turn and it was a spade. Richard only had Axo with an A on the board. Argh! Maybe I should have called it there, but oh well. I'm sure I'll agonize over that decision for a few days at least. You could easily tell who all the Calling Stations at the table were at that point, like I sprayed the area with Calling Station musk. Several of the guys were shaking their heads in disbelief that I didn't call. Several said I made the right call but that it was a tough one. Blah. I guess roughly a 1 in 3 chance to win with a 2 to 1 payoff. I dunno. I'm not good enough in pot odds to judge that right yet. One of the many holes in my play that I need to improve.

It took almost 45 minutes before anyone at the table finally busted out. Every time someone with a short stack pushed in, they got doubled up. Finally the guy to my right busted out in 8th place. I started to get worried about getting blinded down since they were at 500/1000 at that point and pushed in on the button with about 8k with an A8o, basically trying to take down the blinds. The big blind called me and showed A10o, with a 10 on the flop, so I finished in 7th place.

I achieved my primary goal, which was to get more points. I still need to hit the final table once in the last 2 games to make sure I reach the finals, but I feel a lot more comfortable about it at this point.