SE Double Chance - €75 22/02/2006

Only 30 or so turned up for this event, being a big Champions League night. Luckily, the SE is well equipped with plasma screens, so we got to follow Chelsea's defeat by Barcelona while we played. I started off on the weakest of the three tables (some excellent players around on the other tables), and despite an early setback or two, had a decent stack going into the break. One particularly agressive player doubled me up early on, always a pleasure!

Things tightened up considerably after the break, despite the sharp increase in blind structure the SE is infamous for. After another hour we were down to the final table of 9, with only 4 getting paid. I had a middling stack, and nursed it for the next 30 minutes while the big stacks took out the shorties. I pushed when I had the cards or when I had position. With 5 to go, I was by far the shortest stack, while a decent enough regular seemed to have a good 70% of the tournament chips. I would usually suggest a mini-deal at this stage, so that the bubble would get their money back, but I knew none of the players left would go for it, I was odds on to be knocked out and there was little enough in the prize pool as it was. The big stack was bullying the table, and I hoped to get cards during one of his bully attempts to double up and start a comeback. Blinds were 1k/2k, and I had 7.5k left. The big stack raised to 6k from UTG, I looked down at KQo and in went my chips...then the big blind pushed with about 20k, and I knew I was in real trouble. The big stack called, flipped KQs, while the big blind had a dominating AKs...ouch. A K on the flop and an A on the river saw me bubble and go home without a compensating wad of cash.

15 live tournaments played in 2006 and 6 finishes in the money, this was my first bubble of the year.