Poker: $2500 GTD $10 MTT

Having come 52nd from 52 runners in last nights league game and lasting less than an hour in the $250’000 GTD tournament last week…  didn’t have much expectation for the $2500 tournament, but it’s quite fun and have done well in this weekly tournament before…

I didn’t make a lot of notes during the game, but was fairly uneventful and easily had my first objective which is to make the top 50%.   There were 235 runners so still quite some way to go !

In the mid game period I did get lucky when I shove A-Q into A-K but hit my Q to double up, but other than that my luck was up and down in equal measures !

I was always struggling to stay in the top 50% of runners, but as the numbers dwindled towards the 30 who get paid, I was just about maintaining mid table.

As we got to the bubble I was able to play very tight and got into the money at around 12th place of 30 remaining.   I was tight/aggressive in this phase and was very happy to be still around 12th when we got down to 20 players.   I got a good run of cards and managed to get into the top 3 before having a couple of hands with poor luck and ended up in 8th of 10 remaining when we got to the final table.

I had already decided I really wanted to get to at least 7th place ($100 prize) and with everyone playing tight was able to work my way up to around 6th without seeing a showdown.  I did get some good cards but also let the other players knock other players out so without even realizing found myself 4th from 6 remaining players all of a sudden !

It got very tough but another run of good cards and good flops saw me get to 2nd chip stack with around 3x the 3rd players chips.   With two huge stacks against two short stacks it wasn’t long before another player went out and another…. so we’re heads up and I am slight chip lead.

The other player is very tight/solid and I can steal some blinds but they’re insignificant compared to our stacks right now (8’000 big blind against 200’000 stack)   I slowly chip away and make some wild lunges here and there, and get a good chip lead.  I then get a little unlucky when I get a load of chips in with A-J on AKQ flop, to see my opponent with A-K !    I then manage to get allin with Q-Q against A-K on a 8xx flop but the A on the turn see’s me crash out in 2nd place

Felt a bit annoyed and deflated for a while, but consoled myself with the $387 prize for 2nd place (was about $625 for 1st though….) and the knowledge that I am able to go deep in a MTT :-)