Fitz Oscar's Sunday Tournament - €30 26/03/2006

A very short one - I played in Oscar's €30 FO in the Fitz on Sunday, a great little tournament with a nice gentle structure and always improving players. It is self-deal, which is ok, as I usually volunteer to deal for the table to speed things up. I had bought The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion the day before, and was looking forward to playing this in the evening, so being knocked out early wouldn't have been too bad!

The tournament started at 4:30 sharp with 42 runners. The tournament is alternatively a short-handed or full table affair, and this week was 6/7 handed per table. With a starting stack of 4k, it wasn't necessary to get stuck in immediately, as there was a lot of time to go before the blinds would start to bite. Nevertheless, as has been typical for my last couple of times playing this, I started off well and got up to 5.5k before the end of the first level. Went completely card dead after this and go to the break with 3.5k. Ducked and dived for a while, and with 12 to go had only 5k, but played a nice short stack game and got up to 16.8k with 7 to go, 6 going to the final table to get paid.

There were three on my table, four on the other table, with the tournament chip leader with 80k+ to my left. Unfortunately, we had a volunteer dealer while the other table passed the cards around self dealing, so we were playing twice as many hands as they were! Two on the other table were even shorter stacked than I, but they were happy to try to limp into the money. With my recent successes, I only had my eye on 1st or 2nd. I got 66 UTG, blinds were 500/1k. I decided to push, to take down the blinds - I had been given a lot of respect by the other two, after a bit of nifty play over the past level or two. I also slightly outchipped the BB, and wanted to cement my position as 2nd biggest stack on the table, putting him under pressure to make a move. The SB with the massive stack acknowledged my all-in, thought about it for a while, and called. Oops. The BB, facing two all-ins and outchipped by both, thought about it for a minute, and decided he couldn't lay his hand down. Double oops, I was sure I was miles behind now!

However, if I were knocked out by the SB but still had a better hand than the BB, I would be out but in the money! I flipped my 66, the SB flipped 99 and the BB flipped AKo. Everyone (barring me) had made the right move I think. No king no ace and I make money! K on the flop, no 9 no 6, I'm out on the bubble for the first time in about two months. No biggie, it was fun while it lasted :)