O-Poker

You know it is time to stop Christmas shopping for the day when you can't fit any more X-mas presents in your SUV (Durango).

We lined a babysitter up for the entire day yesterday, so that we could get all our X-mas shopping done in one day.

12:00 - Brunch with some neighbors (bottle of wine to ease the pain of shopping)

2:30 - Toys 'R Us. I don't understand how some people can get so crazy, demanding and pushy. It seemed like a lot of people had very little patience or respect for anyone's space. Somehow, we managed to finally work our way out of the store after about 2 hours. (waiting for a bike that wasn't in stock, but shown as in stock is the main reason it took so long.)

If the bill from Toys 'r Us is any indication, our kids should be really happy with their gifts this year.

4:30 - 8:30 More Shopping ----> Dinner ----> Bar!! We had to have a couple of drinks after working our way through the mobs of other zombie shoppers.

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Poker related

I played one of the Mansion added dollar tourneys last night. It was the $215 with $20,000 added to the pool. I signed up because of the added value/overlay and it looked like it was going to be a small field. I was surprised that the tourney only drew 151 players. (Basically, it was $132 of added equity for each player.)

It didn't take me long to realize why the field was so small. The structure was horrendeous (especially for a $200 mtt) - equivalent to a turbo. For some reason, they raise the blinds every 12 minutes during the 1st hour and then every 15 minutes for the remainder of the tourney. You start with only 1,500 chips and the rapid blinds made it become push or fold for a lot of players by the start of the 2nd hour.

At the end of the 1st hour, I sat at 1985 chips and the blinds were already 100/200. The majority of the players at my table were either pushing all-in or folding at this point because of their stack sizes - no joke.

I busted around 58th (about 1 hr, 15 minutes into the tourney). Almost 2/3rds of the field had been eliminated shortly into the 2nd hour.

My bustout hand was a little brutal.

1,685 chips
Blinds 100/200 (about to go up)

I am dealt 55 (I know someone that would have said just push with 55, it's can't lose.)
UTG limps (I thought this was strange since no one had been limping especially UTG)
I flat call (Let's see a flop)
SB completes, BB checks his option

Flop 994

SB bets minimum (no way does he have a 9 since surely somone else is going to bet behind him on that flop)
BB folds, UTG folds.
I decided that my best option is to push

SB thinks and calls with 47. I am in great shape.

Turn 8, River 8. I lose to his 99887. :)

I deposited $$ in Mansion to play a couple of these added money tourneys, so I guess I will probably play a couple more of them. I'll just go into the tourney ahead of time with the mindset for playing a turbo tourney.

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Ouch!!

Wow, these poor guys. Pokerstars has a freeroll that guy away 3 seats to the PCA at Atlantis int he Bahamas. There were 11,000+ players entered and only 3 seats.

How would you like to play an online poker tourney for 14 1/2 straight hours only to miss the PCA package by 1 spot. OUCH!!!

EDIT: As pointed out by TripJax, the sixth place finisher is a blogger - NEWINNOV - that some of us have played with in the past. I feel for ya. It must be brutal to have played so well for so long and have nothing to show for it. Still, it is amazing to have gotten so deep in such a huge field.