My First Final Table!

My poker plan for the night was to deposit at Party and knock off some hands towards the $100 reload bonus. This plan started to fall off the rails a couple hours before I got home, as an impromptu "team meeting" was called tonight in our lunch room at the office. The fact that it wasn't even my "team" didn't much matter. The team meeting consisted mainly of consuming hard liquor which pretty much wiped out any chance of me playing any semi-serious poker tonight.

I had received an email earlier this week from River Belle about a $500 freeroll for people who had used Refer-A-Friend in the last month and managed to remember to register about 10 minutes prior to the start at 10pm. Only 62 people registered for the tourney, so I figured I would have a decent chance to finish in the top 60.

I did not get much in the way of cards but any time I did get a hand worth raising preflop, it was being folded all around. I was card dead for much of the night but managed to steal enough blinds to stay alive and in contention for a while. The table was quite passive and I probably could have taken more advantage of it than I did but I stayed reasonably tight and took calculated shots at steals from time to time. I slowly worked my way up to 15th or so and then raised first in from the cutoff with pocket sixes and the big blind pushed all in over top of me. I consulted the trusty drink at my side and my trusty drink assured me that he was pushing with nothing but overcards. My trusty drink failed to mention that overcards still had a pretty good shot at taking my hand out and completely overlooked the fact that this particular player had been pretty passive all night long and had not pushed at all. I got smacked down by pocket Queens and deserved every little bit of the smack down.

This put me in short stack mode and I got whittled down further by the blinds as I was not catching anything worth pushing. Eventually I was in the big blind and at the point where I had to push or call with any two cards. Someone pushed all in preflop, I called with crap and caught a straight to double up. This hand gave me enough of a stack to sit back and relax again for a while but I was still in short stack mode and pushed all in over top of this same guy when I was holding pocket Nines. Unfortunately, he was holding pocket Aces. Fortunately, I caught a Nine on the river for a very lucky and very ugly suck out.

I couldn't bring myself to say anything in chat even though half the table jumped on him when he started to complain as he had done more sucking out than anyone at the table all night. And it really was an ugly suck out, what am I supposed to say to that?

This gave me enough of a stack to cruise into the money, which I did. I was pretty quiet at the final table, taking down a couple small hands before my trusty drink notified me that I was holding two cards worthy of a Kill Phil push from the button when it was folded around to me. My trusty drink was correct but didn't pay much attention to the fact that the big stack happened to be sitting in the big blind. He called with suited crap, which ended up catching the flush and beating my suited connector crap. I went out quietly in the end and won $20. Despite the low payout, it was still a lot of fun to make a final table and scoop a little money out of a freeroll.

And I have lost all rights to complain about bad beats for at least 24 hours. Fun stuff.