Poker: Home Tournament : July 2007

Back to the normal Pot Limit format this month, but a good turnout (14)

Not sure what has happened but everyone seems to have taken a sensible poker pill this month.... :-) Although the action was frantic as normal, we had very small (comparatively) number of rebuys and still had 9 people going into the last 20 minutes ! Everyone was playing good poker and some weird luck was going round this time....

For me, it was mainly bad luck of course :-) I was playing normal style tonight and three key hands ruined my chances... one was against Joe, when I was all in and ahead with Joe looking for one of 8 outs post flop.... of course he hit on the River to complete a middle pin straight draw. Later on Andy W was all in against me and I was way ahead with A-2 in my hand and A on the flop, I then hit a straight on the turn, but the river put a straight on the board so we had a miracle split rather than me winning. In fairness I did then hit one bit of good luck when all-in against Joe with my J-5 against A-9, despite a 9 on the flop I hit runner runner to double up, although I was short stacked which was why I was playing J-5 in the first place :-) My last hand I was A-Q against Bill with 8-2, but the 2 hitting the flop was enough to take me out the tournament.

Talking of Bill, he took out 8 players.. partly though loose aggressive play and partly by pure luck (some people may say) His huge pot sized bet on the River convinced Andy he was bluffing but when the cards came over, he did have a hand (compared to Andy's A high if I remember correctly) but he also flopped a flush, a nut flush, Full House... the list seemed to go on. The chips were certainly moving around the table though

When we did eventually have a final table, the players fell quite rapidly. Alex had managed to cling on to maintain his 100% record of points scoring so far but went out in 8th place this time. Roger made some brave moves as lowest stack but ended on the cash bubble (4th)

The final hand saw Bill and Simon both needing to win at least the blinds in order to win, but as Jon had nothing to loose by going all-in as short stack, we saw all the chips in the middle (except the odd chips Simon had left over) It could have gone to any of the three, but Bill took the lot by hitting one of his cards to make pair 8's to take the tournament win and the lead in the League table as well !

Very close, tense (and in some ways odd) game but highly enjoyable (and cheap) night out

League positions are still very open, so anyone can still get a good run to win ! Roll on next month...