70K victory recap

Even though the tournament ended around 4am CST, I was too pumped up and it took another hour before I actually was able to fall asleep. Of course, I was up again around 8am, so needless to say, I felt it the rest of the day. Nevertheless, a score like this makes it all very worthwhile.

Whenever I play any tournament, my mindset is on hitting certain goals, with the ultimate goal being to win the tournament. One of the things that has helped me considerably is having 'a plan'. This plan is pretty much the same for all tournaments, but I try to stick to it as much as I possibly can. I find that by doing this, I'm not caught up in what others in the tournament are doing, and helps me navigate, as you would in any other goal oriented task. For example, if your going to climb Mt Everest, you don't start by thinking about the final climb to the top of the mountain. Now I'm no mountain climber, but I'm sure that the 'plan' is all about hitting smaller milestones, and each of those is a victory in it of itself. Once you start to get to the rarified air, then that's when it gets exciting, because the final milestone is within your sites. For me, that's making the final table.

As poker players, that is our rarified air. And it sure smells sweet.

This tournament had some setbacks along the way. This is why the plan is important. Going back to the mountain climb, there are times I'm sure that events that are out of your control, force you to take steps back. Maybe it's weather, or impassable terrain, but the bottom line is you need to retreat before you can move forward again. In poker, this comes in the forms of suckouts/badbeats. If there is one area of my game where I think I am doing better, is certainly around handling these when they come up. This is not to say I don't tilt, I just tilt less I suppose. But one of things in my plan, is that when I do suffer a setback, I don't throw my tournament away. I use to do that all the time. If you have read some of my sad sack entries in the past, you will see that very clearly. The old chip and a chair was just a story of some lucky dude who gets super lucky to come back, and it's like hitting the lotto. The reality is that unless your down to a literal chip, you usually have some time to at least get your money in selectively, rather than just dumping all in on the next hand

In this tournament, this was my first setback:

This kind of beat use to set me off in the worst way. 93% fav on the flop when the money goes in, only to see the runners hit the board. Thats about as brutal and demoralizing as it gets, and in the past, would have been the reason for me to throw the rest of the tournament in the toilet.

Next setback occurs a little later on, when I make a move on a late position raiser who was playing timid, but he actually had me dominated:

As you can see, the result was I only had 24K left, basically 4 bets plus. I was on the button the next hand, so I again, instead of just throwing my last few chips in the toilet, I knew I had a few more 'looks' before I had to go allin. That came a few hands later:

So that gave me a little breathing room, and shortly thereafter, I went on a mini rush, were I was able to basically steal the blinds and ante's a few times in a row. My next big hand was with QQ, and I got max value:

This hand gave me another bump up, was happy to keep the pot manageable:

From this point, it was mostly lots of steals, and picking spots all the way to the final table, which looked like this at the start:

Seat 1: Mntnman (514227 in chips)

Seat 2: aranator (180373 in chips)

Seat 3: simply2cool (298368 in chips)

Seat 4: LunaPiena (282734 in chips)

Seat 5: sspAAdess (850828 in chips)

Seat 6: froso65 (433806 in chips)

Seat 7: bigbrains (242775 in chips)

Seat 8: Hickboy (1416775 in chips)

Seat 9: Pocket Quads (382114 in chips)

So 7th out of 9 was my starting position at the final table, with the binds at 6k/12k, and I had about 23 bets. Not great, but not desperate either.

It didn't take long to lose the first player, I think this was like the 3rd hand at the FT:

I picked up a nice pot here with cowboys:

We lose the next player on this bad beat:

I pick up another nice pot here against BigBrains, although I must say, I have no idea why I didn't shove the river?

Brutal beat here to take us down to 6:

BigBrains pp can't win the race and were to 5:

Then a big hand where I finally get AA, and I get paid off nicely:

Boom! moved me up to 2nd in chips, and now in really good shape to take this down!

A few hands later this hand leads to frodo's exit and we are down to 4:

A few hands later hickboy eliminates spades and takes a huge chip advantage:

From this point, Hickboy and I tangle in many pots, with the lead exchanging several times. All the while, mntnman, was pretty much staying out of our way, taking the occasional blinds to keep up.

This hand was the pivotal hand, as it gave me the lead, and pretty much command of the tournament...freaking awesome time to get the bullets!

Obviously this was huge. From this point on, all I had to do was lean on these 2 guys, and here are the final 2 KO hands for the tournament:

and Presto wins it for me here:

Certainly a very satisfying win to say the least, and I'm hoping to keep going with even bigger scores in the future!

Who knows...maybe today I can cash in on some of the big tournys today....FTOPS & SCOOP filled day! Also will be in the BBT5 Invitational & a main event freeroll race sponsored by good old Fulltiltpoker.com.

Good luck all!

2BA