Wednesday Night at the River Pete

Weeknight tournaments are rare in our group. A couple of years ago, someone had a regular Wednesday night tournament. I would consider it a failure. Not because nobody wanted to play, but because everyone wanted to play. At times, attendance was over 40 players. Even with 5k stack, and a structure that was a little quick, the games didn't end until between 12:30 and 1:30am. That is just too late when you gotta work in the morning.

One of our hosts, River Pete, expressed some interest in trying a weeknight tournament. Since he's only got two tables, and I'm off the next day, I decided to TD for him. My goal was to have a tourney that was over by Midnight (7:30p start), but not be a Push-N-Pray shove-fest. We started with just 5k chips, which is now a small stack for any our tournaments. I added extra levels like 125/250, 250/500, 500/1000 to keep things moving slowly. Overall, the structure worked very well. But the 11:30p end time was mostly due to the low turnout of 15 players.

This is the second attempt at this Wednesday night tournament. The first one, about six weeks ago, went horribly for me. I was the first one out with a Boat over Boat cooler. I flopped bottom set, and they flopped top two pair. The Turn was my death cards as the board paired. It's very boring to be the first player eliminated, and being stuck there as the TD.

This tournament started much better. After about 30 minutes, I was up 2k chips. The biggest chunk was from calling a raise on the Button with 54s and flopping two pair.

After that, I went really card dead. I didn't mind, though. With the short stack structure, I wanted to avoid conflict, and basically fold to the Final Table. When we got to the Final Table, I had 4400 chips. With the blinds being 125/250, I was still in OK shape. I just stuck to the plan of being patient, and wait for my opportunities.

And they finally came. I had a nice run of Big Aces and Big Pairs. I even knocked out a few players. By the time we got to the Bubble (3 got paid), I had about 20k and was either the chip leader, or close to it.

At this point, things started going down hill. The chip leader, Jesse, is a new player, and this was the first time I've played with him. And, as it turns out, he's a bit of a LAG-tard. He plays a lot of hands. He limps from any position. He min-raises, and he overbets. The first time I got to see his cards was when he raised UTG 8-handed, and then called Diablo's All-In with K9d.

Since he sat directly after me, Jesse was a bit of a pain in my ass when we got short handed. My chip stack was slowly shrinking. When Jesse knocked out Rasin' Ray in 3rd place, it gave Jesse an obsene chip lead. I had 8400 of the 75k chips in play. And with the blinds at 500/1000, I only had 8 BB to start the heads-up match.

I folded the first two hands of trash. Third hand, he raises All-In again. I look at the first card, which is a Q, and I call. I've got Q3s and he's got 77. I hit the flush on the Turn, and I've now got a few chips.

A few hands later, we get to one of the most important hands of the match, but not because it was the biggest. It was a simple limp, limp, and check to the River card. Jesse then fires 2500 into the 2000 pot. Since I've seen him overbet many pots tonight, I quickly call with K4 no pair, and wait for him to show. He shows 10-high, and I turn over my K-high. He wasn't happy with this. But it really slowed him down. He started raising less, and even folded some small blinds.

So I started to step on the gas. I even got back to my standard Heads-Up strategy of raising every other SB, regardless of my cards, and either calling or folding the other SBs. At one point, he noticed that the chip stack were getting closer. I had about 25k of the 75k in play.

Finally, at the 600/1200 level, I raised in the SB with 83o, and he called. Flop 8s 7s 4d. He leads out for 6k. I shove All-In with top pair. He calls and shows Q4s for a pair & flush draw. It's a coin flip at this point (48% to 52%). But a Q on the Turn gives him two pair, and I miss my two outer on the River. I finish 2nd for $140.

Normally, I hate 2nd place. But with such a huge hill to climb, it's hard to complain. Plus, I made $110 in four hours. Not too bad for a Wednesday night.