Weekend Recap

Here's a rundown of the events of this past weekend:

I made $180 in the Thursday game over 8.5 hours. I tried to tighten up a little more than usual in order to get into 'tournament mode' for the AC trip, but I still managed to have a decent session thanks to some quality cards.

After spending most of Friday morning getting packed for the trip, I arrived in AC just after 10pm and met up with the others at the Hilton, where they were already seated at the $1/$2 NLHE tables. I wasn't really interested in sitting in a cash game since I had planned on entering a tournament at 11:00 the next morning at the Borgata, so I decided to hang out at the video poker machines and test my knowledge of basic strategy. I quickly learned that my knowledge of basic strategy was virtually non-existent, and it wasn't long before I took a seat at $1/$2 NLHE along with the rest of the guys. I continued to play the same tight game that I tried to play Thursday night, but consecutive bad beats (of which I will spare you the details) put me $300 in the hole right off the bat.

Rather than trying to get my money back, which I'm typically inclined to do despite my better judgement, I actually got up from the table and headed back to our room at the Fairfield Resorts to get some rest. Lack of sleep cost me dearly in my first trip to AC last year when I misread my hole cards during a tournament. I was determined not to make the same mistake this time around.

I woke up to my alarm at 9:30 Saturday morning and was out the door of the hotel an hour later (note: no matter how close it looks, trying to walk to the Borgata from the strip is a very bad idea). When I got to the Borgata poker room about 5 minutes before the tournament start time, there were a number of people in line for registration. Unfortunately, it wasn't until about 10 minutes later that half of us realized that we didn't have the player cards necessary to register, which ended up costing us another 15 minutes of table time. In short, the registration fiasco (my fault entirely) caused me to miss out on all but 2 hands of the first blind level.

Late start aside, I played a fairly disciplined game for the remainder of the tournament and didn't have to make many moves at all. I basically just used my tight image to steal the occasional blinds and take down pots post-flop whenever my position and/or cards (mainly cards) allowed me. There were a few interesting hands/concepts that I encountered, but we'll save those for a later post.

I reached the final table about 8.5 hours into the tournament. When we got down to 8 players, one of them asked if everyone wanted to chop the pot at a little over $4K per man. It sounded like a pretty good deal to me since the blinds were getting large in relation to our stacks, and it would take either a first place ($14.5K prize) or second place ($7K prize) finish in order to make a substantially larger amount. Unlike a few of the other players, I had no problem when the chip leader relented, but it was still somewhat poetic that he ended up going broke just 5 hands later.

The 7 remaining players agreed to an equal chop of $5100, with final places being assigned for tax purposes based on chip stack. Despite having only the 2nd smallest stack, I agreed to accept the $14.5K hit on my taxes in exchange for $1K of the small stack's $5100 prize up front (I'm at the high end of my tax bracket, and the $7K 2nd place prize would likely have put me over regardless). This brought my total prize to $6100.

After the tournament, I went with the guys on a buffet run, then we all registered for a $40+$10 NLHE freezeout at the Hilton. At 10 tables, this tournament was about 30% smaller than the Borgata's, but I was still pleased to finish one spot from the final table in 10th place, especially considering the very fast structure. Making back-to-back final tables would have been pretty sweet, but I certainly couldn't complain about my results for the day.