Hoe Hoe Hoe

Well I tried to sign up for the Pokerstars blogger championship...and they said no post...no dice. Figured I might as well try to get back on the horse. Haven't had much to blog about since I have been running (I mean playing) bad. I did go to Turning Stone in NY over Thanksgiving to play a couple of live deep stack tourneys. I preregistered via phone with credit card and it was still a 45 minute process to get my seat assignment. It was a great structure. My first table I got seated 3 seats left of Irongirl. We had never met, but it soon became apparent she was a blogger from the table conversation. Play at my first table was the usual mixture of TAG LAG with a couple of rocks. I built a decent stack and our table finally broke about 4 hours or so in. This entire time we may have had 6 allins at that table (not totally unusual given ratio of the blinds to the depth of stacks). Any way, I get moved to a new table and there are 3 allins in my first 2 orbits there. Completely different atmosphere. Saw crazy shoves and crazy calls. There were 387 runners and the payouts started at the top 40 people. The tournament director announced that play would stop at 3am and resume the next day at 1pm. I had already registered for the 11am tourney the next morning and asked how that would work. He said I could play in both at the same time. I didn't see how that was going to work but figured i would see how things went. When they called time, I was 3rd in chips and there was 28 of us left... In the money, but we were all still deep stacked relative to the blinds. The next day, I started the 11am tourney with the hope of building a decent stack that could withstand me sitting out through blinds once the other tourney resumed. I managed to chip up to 32k from the 16.5k starting stack by the time it was 12:50 (10 minutes before the other tourney resumed) when my do or die hand came up. I am dealt JJ utg+3 and raise 4xbb. I had been very active and got called by both the cutoff and the small blind. Flop comes QJ9 rainbow. SB checks, I lead for 2/3 pot, cutoff calls, sb shoves allin and has me barely covered. I call hoping he has the slow played overpair KK or AA and was trapping me since I had been so aggressive trying to build my stack. The cutoff folds and the small blind shows K 10 off. His flopped straight holds vs. my flopped middle set and I am off to resume the tourney from the night before. My stack wavers back and forth between 660K and 410K. My critical hand comes when we are down to 19 players left and I am at 642K. Guy to my left has 390K. UTG is a short stack and limps for 20k (current blinds ante were 10k/20k 2k ante). I am 3rd to act and raise to 80K with AKsooted. Next player to act had 3 bet 3 of my last 4 raises and shoves allin for his 390K. Then a guy 6th to act that has me covered goes in the tank. He eventually folds his pocket jacks and everyone else included the shorty limper from utg folds. Action is back to me and I am looking at calling off 318k of my remaining 560k to win a pot of 816k. I tank and decide to call given his frequency 3 betting me as this would make me chipleader by a significant amount with 18 people left if I win. I figured that I could battle my way back if I lost with 240K. He had KK and held and I ended up going cardead thereafter. I took 14th for $757 (buyin was $260 i think) after my A9sooted shove (once down to 6bb) over a button raise couldn't get there vs. his JJ. First place would have paid $17K. I could have folded and stolen my way up the payboard when I had the $642k stack...but went for king of the mountain status by calling off with a drawing hand. I would probably do it again though...so lesson not learned. Till next time, don't get them allin drawing dead!
JD