Britbloggerment

I've seen the Britbloggerment mentioned in a few blogs but had never played until today. Overall, I have to say it was one of the better played tournaments all around. Only 13 runners to start, but it took an hour and 20 minutes to lose the first four and get to the final table. Considering the total prize pool was all of $65 I would have expected a lot more goofing around and big hammer plays.

I got off to a decent start, adding about $600 to my starting $1500. I had blinded down a bit when ResdentEvil made it 3BB to go and I min-raised him, hoping he'd come over the top big time. He did, pushing the rest of his 1365 in the pot. I instacalled. When the cards were turned over I could hear ResdentEvil cackle, "You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous is never to get involved in a land war in Asia. And only slightly less well known is this: never take pocket aces up against a Scotsman when his tournament life is on the line!" He turned a third queen and I was left with about M=7 in only level 3.

I had just enough chips to scare people a bit, but not enough to do much aside from push or fold. I was patient and pushed when the time seemed right. One time of which was, oddly, me again taking AA against QQ, this time, fortunately, not held by a Scotsman. I prevailed and was back in the hunt.

As the stacks started to dwindle I got lucky a few times and caught reasonable cards when a smaller stack pushed. As we got to the bubble I was far behind, M of about 1.5 and less than one-third the chips of the next larger stack. I started pushing with anything remotely reasonable and either the other players were scared to bubble or they just kept getting crap. Next thing I knew I was in second. Then I sucked out on Katitude when I turned a K against her QQ.

We were down to three and I had a healthy lead. Then I made the mistake of calling mauzj's all-in with my 33. He had a massive Q2o. The board counterfeited my pair and I dropped into third. A few hands later I got retribution when I pushed with 76o and got called by mauzj's KQo. I flopped a 7 and rivered a 6 to take down a nice pot.

A few more nice pots and I moved into a commanding lead. We got down to two when my A9o held up against Rosie_m_t's KTo. I had an almost 5-to-1 chip lead going into heads up.

It was all but over when mauzj moved in with K9 vs my KQ. But he caught one of his three nines to take a commanding lead. The final hand I again got it in with the best of it, but mauzj caught his cards and I didn't.

Well played all. It was a fun time.