Well I just finished playing a tournament on Full Tilt which left me disappointed. It was a $22 buy-in tournament with a guaranteed $200k (first place was around $31k I think?). There were 10,407 entrants with the top 1350 making the money...with that many entrants it felt like I was playing in an online version of the WSOP lol. Anywho, I was playing pretty solid poker; picking my spots by not trying to get frisky with mediocre hands and trying my hardest to capitalize on premium hands. Unfortunately I never picked up much steam as my highest spot was only about 3x the starting stack (roughly 10k...starting stacks were 3.2k) and that was late when the avg stacks were around 15k.
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So about 3 1/2 hours into the tournament it was down to roughly 1500 players left. My stack was gettin eaten away by the blinds and antes as I had only 6.5k left with blinds at 400/800 and antes at 100. Avg. stacks were around 21k. It was a hard time for me because my immediate goal was to outlast 150 more people and make the money, but I wasn't sure if I could make it without winning another hand. Sucks too because for the last 45minutes or so I went completely card dead and was only getting hands I wouldn't have even played if I had a big stack (stuff like 10 4, 5 2, 2 7, etc). So on this particular hand, myself and another small stack (around 8k) were small blind and big blind. I happened to pick up pocket 10s and was facing a raise 3x the BB by the big stack at the table who had over 30k. I decided to push back and move all in preflop since I figured the big stack was just trying to put pressure on the smaller stacks who were in the blinds. After the big stack thought about it for a minute, he decides to make the call and put me at risk. He turns over A 10 offsuit. Flop shows 578 rainbow, all blanks. Turn comes a 9. I'm feeling pretty good but am still sweating the river since he has 3 outs...sure enough he gets his 3-outer and knocks me out with a river Ace. So in 3 1/2 hours I ended up beating out almost 9k people but still finished out of the money (1496/10,407...146 places out of the money)
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I was pretty sad at the result obviously because I really wanted to at least make the money, if not finish higher. Since I'm always looking to improve my game, do you guys have any comments about my final move of all-in with 10s? Granted 10s isn't the greatest hand, but I felt like that was the best spot I was going to get in awhile and I sensed semi-weakness from the raise. Any comments, whether they are compliments, criticisms, or simply neutral comments or suggestions are greatly welcome!
smarston
The big field tourney's on Tilt are a lot of fun, I play the Daily Dollar almost every day at 20:15. Look me up if you are playing in it. I am sure it will come, the main thing I have to say about those big tournaments is that a lot of times you will be close to the money, and the times you hit more than make up for it if you can get deep into the cash.