In terms of my performance I didn't play badly, at least compared to my often common mistake of letting the pot get too big in live tournaments. Part of the reason for this may have been the paucity of decent starting hands I received. Throughout the event, the highlight was AK, a hand I have lost so much money with online in recent weeks, it was only ever going to cost me chips, and 88 twice, but no bona fide monster hands. When the pots were small to start with I rivered a flush once, and turned a full house another, but these were the hands that were never going to make or break me, unfortunately.
As the tourney progressed and the blinds grew, I started to feel the pressure and had to take a back seat and hope that when I did get a decent spot, they would hold up. This happened to some extent but instead of getting me back in it, I just bumped along the bottom. Ended up with two split pots and a couple of blind steals but that was about it. When I did get it all in with a similar sized stack, I had A4s and he had A5s - I hit the 4 on the turn but he caught the 5 on the river. After another steal to bring me up to 5k in chips (the blinds were 600/1200 by now), I picked up 67s under-the-gun so shoved and had three callers, who checked down every street. This was good to see as I had paired the 7 on the turn. Unfortunately, the board also contained four hearts and one of the guys had a Qh to send me home in 119th (out of the 405 on the day) and after seven hours of poker.
Oddly for a live tournament, I stayed at the same table for the duration, and due to watching quite a lot of individuals play could separate the good players from the average ones. Two in particular - Zafar Aslam and Mark Newman caught the eye (the latter, who was the guy with the Qh who knocked me out, is still in the tournament as I type and down to the final 4).
Also special mention to Tom Piccirilli (aka Tom Pich, aka FezioJnr on GNF), a fellow forumer who eventually finished a very impressive 12th in the event and took home over 800 Euro).
After sleeping much of the day away on Sunday, I played a few rush tournies online, including one with over 1600 entrants, in which I eventually ended up coming 20th. This major feat was rewarded by a seemingly paltry prize of $56. I know online tournies are top-heavy and I should be happy with winning 5x my buy-in, but still....
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