I love the big multi-table poker tournaments. In 2005 and 2006, I won two trips to Vegas to play in the WSOP Main Event. At the time, I was playing regularly in the largest tournament games on PokerRoom. Both tournaments I played well and got extremely unlucky in some ugly hands. After the tournament in 2006, I stopped playing regularly. Several factors contributed (the terrible online poker legislation, really bad run of tournaments at the end of 2006, moving, marriage!) but regardless, I haven’t played very much at all since the end of 2006.

Anyway, I’m more settled and have decided to focus more on poker again. I’ve had to switch poker sites to Full Tilt. I’m not as fond of their software in general but I’m adjusting. I also only had a small amount of money on the site as I had transferred the vast majority of my winnings out back in the day. I decided to just stick with the small bankroll and work my way back up. 

Last night, after being unable to play CoD4, I decided to try my hand at the first large multi-table poker tournament in over a year. I’ve been crushing the single table Sit-n-Gos for the past few weeks so I put my new earnings to use and bought in to the 375-person tournament. After the first hour, I was in the top 5 in chips and thinking $$$. After the 2nd hour, I was around 12th in chips. At this point, I’m feeling pretty good. Sadly, poker has a nasty habit of crushing your soul at just these sort of moments.About the middle of the 3rd hour, I took hit after hit and was tumbling down in chip count. I was still in the top 25 in chips with 75 people to go. I opened several hands in a row with a raise only to fold as someone came over the top. I then picked up AK and opened again for 900, looking for someone to feel I’m getting on tilt. Graciously (or not), a guy I had pegged as loose and extremely aggressive reraised me to 2400. I gave him a moments notice and moved all-in over his raise for 10K. I was confident my AK was in good shape.  I don’t know how you can call there with 77, but that’s exactly what he did. 

Not a bad situation for me at all: A 50-50 coin flip for the win and you have to win these type of situations to win tournaments. This was actually the first coin-flip I had been in all evening. Ace on the flop looked good but nestled with it was a 7 which pretty much ended the hand. I busted out around 75th place. Not a bad showing but, of course, I didn’t finish in the money and certainly I feel I was in a good spot to make a deep run.