A Tale of Two Donkeys

Two Bodonkeys to be exact. I played in both the past week. I was able to make it to the final table in both but in two totally different ways. On Tuesday I was the short stack the whole tournament. Over the last three tables it seemed that my only move was to shove my constant 10bb stack. I ended up busting out in 9th place on the money bubble.

Thursday's event was the exact opposite. From the get go I had hands and when I didn't I never was played back at. In the first two levels I had it up to nearly 4k from the 2500 starting stack without showing down many hands. I hung around the 4500 mark when in a 3-4 hand stretch I was sitting in 14k when the second biggest stack was 6k. The first hand was against a stack that was about 2k less than me. I had 9,9 and raised and he called. The flop comes 4,4,2 and I lead out. He shoves for around 3x my raise and I call. He has the under pair (6,6) and my hand holds. A couple hands later I pick-up 8,8 and raise it up. I get 3-bet from one of the blinds and I flat. The flop comes 8,x,xddd. The blind shove and I snap call. He has the A,A without the Ad and I am now on the big stack.

I was able to take down 2-3 hands per lap after that occasionally having to fold to some 3-bets. When we made the final table I had around 16k and was around 2nd or 3rd in chips. Nzgreen also made the final table on the short stack. Twice he 3-bet my opening raise and I had to fold. The last time he ran into A,K and was busted.

With seven people left and Waffles t109 bounty still up for grabs he raises UTG to 1800 with around 4k behind. I am OTB with J,J and 14k behind and raise it up just short of what he had. It folds back to him and he ships. He tables K,Q off and we are off to the races, till the first card that hits the board, the K. There goes the t109 freeroll flip. I was knocked down to around 6k after that hand and ended up busting out in 7th shortly after that good for my buy-in back.

It has been a while since I have had the early stack. Its fun to raise every other hand and play the bully. I will be back next week.

On a side note AIPS did not go as well for me. I did manage to get my stack up to 6500 from the 3k starting stack at the first break. Most of my chips came in one hand where I called a raise with K,Qhh. Flop comes X,X,Xhhh and the raiser ships 6x the pot in and I call. I expected to see the naked Ah here but he had the A,A without the heart. In the second hour I was moved to HeffMike's table. He was in the big stack. I lost a little over half my chips to him when I called his UTG raise with 9,9 from the BB. On a K,K,4 flop I check raised half my stack and he put me all-in. I folded. It was all downhill from there and ended up busting not long after that.