Chip And A Chair... Can It Be Done? Pt. 1

Why oh why do I get myself in these situations? It sometimes seems I like punishing myself or giving myself some pressure packed situation in which I must pull something out of one of my eyes (and I don’t mean the two pretty blue ones). It happens with bills, rent, pool, whatever… I just find a way to dig a hole for myself, almost as if on purpose in order to force myself to pull off some amazing feat in the last moments. In a sick and twisted way I kind of get off on the pressure I suppose.

Sometimes I do this to myself in the array of poker tournaments I play, though not on purpose, it happens. And today had one of those examples.

After a very successful two days of playing, I sit in for my last sit-n-go of the day. Thus far I have had only a few bumps in the road along the way, but this tourney would put a test to me. Just a nice little 20 man tourney to pass the time and make a few bucks. Early on I get pocket 9’s. I don’t like playing too fast early on, so I min-raised it to see what happened. 2 callers. Flop is something like 5-9-Q. Nice, I love it! One guy bets, I smooth call as does the other guy. Next card is innocent, first guy checks, I bet about half the pot, guy after me calls, and the checker raises all in. I feel good and call, as does the other guy. I forget what the river was, but turns out the original better had pocket queens! Ouch! I am absolutely crippled, not even able to afford one big blind. But for some reason I didn’t feel like I was done just yet.

Two hands later I get JJ and triple up. Good, but such a tease as I’m still in a bad way. Two more hands after that I get QQ and double up off of it. Now I’m still in bad shape, but actually have something to work with. I only have a little over 5 times the big blind and the blinds are about to hit me. I see a flop for half price out of the small blind and actually hit bottom pair, but there’s several people in this pot, and I’m forced to just let it go. When I’m BB luckily another short stack was beside me and just folded over his blind. Nice, an extra orbit for me to see a few more hands. Unfortunately just after that the tables merge, and now I’m back against a full table again, obviously not a favorable position for someone that needs to make a move soon. Add on top of that the blinds are about to hit me again due to my seat at the new table!

Nothing good happens, and then something very strange that I still don’t understand happened. I was BB, with 3 limpers, small blind and two others. I get a free flop, nothing. Checks around. 4th street misses, nothing. Checks around. River comes, nothing. Small blind checks to me, and I decide to make a minimum bet at the pot, which consists of over half my chips at this time. They all fold. I was amazed, but hey I’ll take it. Very next hand I decide to play my 10-Q suited, hoping to catch something big. And sure enough I flop a straight. I bet out the minimum and get a couple of callers. Turn brings a flush draw possibility for someone, so I go ahead and move and get one caller, and I hold up, more than doubling my stack.

Suddenly with seven players left, I’m back over a thousand chips and have a fighting chance. But there’s still a long way to go. I’m barely ahead of the short stack, and the other five all have pretty fair stacks in relation to ours. To heighten the drama the blinds are increasing once again in a matter of seconds. To make it this far with only a chip and my virtual chair is quite an accomplishment already, but I didn’t come this far only to go down now….

To be continued
Sack

sack@pokergreed.com