Soooo Close in Riverchasers ...

Ouch, ouch, ouch ... yes it stings right now. I was determined to play a smart game at Riverchasers tonight. With the blogger gathering going on in Las Vegas, I knew the depleted Riverchasers field would be the best chance to win a spot in the Battle of the Bloggers Tournament of Champions.

I got very little in the way of cards the first hour and was fortunate to be down to only 2,900. I got as low as about 2,000 before I caught a few cards and was able to win some monster hands, including an A-A vs K-K vs wwonka69 that held up. I was patient and waited for the right times to push to stay viable in the game.

I was not one of the bigger stacks at the final table. It was time to continue to be patient and hit hard when cards and/or position dictated. I ended up playing the short stack for some time, a position familiar to me. At least I have gotten pretty good at it! Some judicious betting and a decent hand or two kept me in the game while other bloggers were hitting the rail. My instincts were good, and the number at the final table kept getting smaller and smaller.

We got down to the final two and were pretty even in the size of our stacks -- actyper: 131,736; me: 114,262. Blinds were 2,500 and 5,000. I was dealt 9-9 in the small blind and raised to 16,200. actyper re-raised to 50,000. Feeling like I had the best hand at that time, I re-raised all in and actyper called with A-Qos. I was a slight favorite -- 55% to 44%. You can see the damaging flop:

Of course, now that it is over and I lost, I am looking at other ways I could have played. Should I have just called the raise to 50,000? There was obviously no way that I was going to fold 9-9 heads up. After the flop, would he slow play the TPTK? What if he raised?

I got down to the final two by being aggressive with my big hands. Things were working out, and I swear that I could feel that the tournament would be mine when we got down to three or four left. Shit.

Congrats to actyper on the victory. He played an outstanding game and was certainly worth of the victory. Alas, I thought that described me too ...

There are only a few more chances left to win a seat to the Tournament of Champions. Looks like I need to pull another effort like this out of my bag of tricks.