Cardzilla presents …

I finally had an interesting showing at the 1.5K NL in the Bellagio 2006 4th Annual Five-Star World Poker Classic yesterday.  Bellagio was the busiest I’ve seen it in a long time, which I thought was strange for a Monday.  When the tournament started, there still were 50 people in line to get in.  The field was so big, that I started in the main poker room, as the Fontana Bar was completely full.  The final entry count was 498, and interestingly enough, over half of them were gone before the first break.  I was almost one of them, as my stack was on life-support, and I had to push with 88.  Fortunately, I got called by AJo and when an 8 appeared on the flop, I had my first double up in 5 major tournaments.

Shortly before the 2nd break, I had to push again with JJ as my stack was dwindling.  I was not happy to see a young man who was playing like a complete rock re-raise me all in to my left, but was thrilled to see him turn over 99, and I had my 2nd double up before we got to move to the main tournament room.  I still had the same players and seat from the main room, and shortly before the table got broken, I picked up QQ and pushed again.  This time I was up against AKo, but when he didn’t improve, my stack was finally half way decent, but still a ways off from the average.

I had survived 7.5 hours for once.  There were only 70 players left, and they were paying 50.  I started to feel confident that I could do this, and I was playing great.  I had made some great moves that I was very proud of, including a squeeze play with 56c against a raiser and a caller, which worked great because I thought that the original raiser was just playing a bit reckless with his large stack.  My final hand was very exciting.  I had picked up AKo in early position and decided to just push and not mess around with my smallish stack.  The guy to my left called after some thought, and the small blind thought for awhile too, so I wanted him to call also.  The pot was monstrous after he finally pushed also.  Unfortunately, he had JJ, but I was thrilled to see AQo to my left!  I would have cruised into the money if I hit, but a Q flopped and it was over.  I walked away a little disappointed, but overall, very happy with my showing, and got some great experience and much needed encouragement from my previous terrible showings.