The Beat Goes On

The single greatest key to winning is knowing thy enemy -- yourself.

-Andy Glazer

I played in another of the free poker tourneys last night, this one at the Loafing Leprechaun in Duluth. I think I had a pretty good chance to win, had I been able to lay down one key hand. But I'll get to that later.

FullHouseHold'em, the company that my brother-in-law works for, started their "Poker League" last night. The Poker League is basically a 20-week point gathering expedition in which players get points for finishing in the top eight in any tournament that FullHouseHold'em runs. At the end of the 20 weeks, the top points players will get together for a final tourney where the first prize is a paid entry to the 2006 World Series of Poker. All this is sponsored by Bluff Magazine.

Anyway, I decided that since you can play in any number of tourneys a week, that I'd start off trying to earn some early points. My best hand of the night came when I was in the big blind with pocket threes. The flop came 3-3-x. It was checked around, and the turn was a five. The small blind checked, I checked, and UTG+1 went all-in. It was folded around to me, and I called, blurting out "Can you beat quads?" before I could stop myself. The river was a blank, and I doubled up. During the break, I apologized for my rather dickish remark, and the guy said he completely understood. Quads are a very rare thing, except for last night. In this tourney, five sets of quads were hit. What're the odds? No, really, what are the odds? I don't know.

The hand I should have layed down came very near the final table. The blinds were 400/800, and I was in the big blind with a fair sized chip stack, and was dealt K-7 offsuit. It was folded to the small blind who completed, and I checked. The flop was K-x-x, two spades. The small blind checked, and I bet 1000. He raised to 2000, so I went all-in. He called with the nut flush draw, and hit it on the turn. This left me with 400 in chips with 11 people left in the tourney. Somehow I managed to hang around and finish sixth, so I managed to snag some points.

Ironically, my sixth place finish was worth more points than my first place finish last Thursday would have been worth, due to the small field last Thursday and the large field last night. Here's the chart that explains how points are awarded:

As you can see, the points are based not only on your finishing position, but on how many people were in the tourney.

I'm going to try to keep playing two a week, at the Loafing Leprechaun and at Buffalo Wild Wings, but I don't know how long that will go over with the wife. I'm going to try my best to rack up the points, though. I really want to be in that final tourney. I feel like my tourney game is starting to come around, and that I'm becoming a very good tourney player. I guess time will tell if that's really the case or if I'm just fooling myself.

Oh, and by the way, I entered the $5 Turbo on PokerChamps yesterday (the same one that I won on Sunday) and came in second out of a field of 40.