Last night I fired up a freeroll poker tournament, just for fun. It was an 1800 person tournament, with the top 9 places getting a seat in another 1800+ person tournament - the top 9(?) in that tournament get a seat in another tournament (less people this time - maybe 45?) and the top 7 people in that tournament get a trip to Australia to play in a big money tournament there. Overall, I knew it was a waste of time, but I felt like playing some tournament poker.

Anyway, about an hour and a half in, it was bedtime, so I decided to throw away my chips - I had a slightly below average stack of ~7500 (initial stacks were 1500) and I reraised a guy all in with QJc preflop. He called me with A4o. Pretty insane, but I was willing to give him my chips. The flop hit me pretty hard, QJx. So now I had the big stack at the table, and it would take some doing to lose the rest of my chips. I called a guy’s all in with the all powerful K9d, only to be raised by a guy with pocket 7s. Great, I thought I was done, because in the interim I’d lost some chips to make my stack more reasonable. The 7’s held up for him, and I was ready for bed. Unfortunately I still had 2K left. I doubled up the next hand with whatever crappy cards I was dealt, and again the next hand. It was pretty sick. Eventually I did get beaten when my 54s didn’t hold up :)

The funny thing is that I busted out in 321st place out of 1800, and until I decided to lose my chips, I only showed down my hand two or three times (once was KK all in preflop against 66, one other time I had a full house on a 4flush board and raked a nice pot.) I was pretty amazed at how quickly the thing went. I was also amazed by how poorly people played.

The reason for wanting to play some tournament poker, is because this poker night (tonight) is tournament night. I used to play fake money tournaments pretty exclusively, but I haven’t done it much in quite a while, so I needed a brushup. Not that the level of play at Rob’s is as bad as the online fake money tournaments…Still, the types of play required don’t differ that much.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Who shot who with the what now?” - Jasper