Guy goes into the tank and asks “ do I have Q10”. My reply was plagiarised and something I think I read in Dara O’Kearneys blog recently “wouldn’t it defeat the whole
purpose of the game if I told you my hand“. Now Guy says he has a straight and asks me will I show him my hand if he folds? There was a little history to this and I tell him that I will show him as we have been getting on very well and that I liked him, which I did. Guy then proceeds to fold 107 for the second nuts face up. I keep my part of the bargain and show the flush draw. In fairness to Guy he didn’t let the hand affect him and he went on to cash, again I felt I had dodged a bullet.We had a 30 minute break around seven and when we came back I immediately won two large successive pots. The first I raised to 3500 UTG with JJ and a French kid pushed for 34000 on the button. I was fairly sure that if he held a real premium hand he would of just put in a standard 3bet. In fact I was a little disappointed to see AQ when I called as I thought there was a decent chance he held an under pair. Luckily the jacks held and I was up to over 90k. The very next hand a cork player over raises to 6,500 from UTG and I look down to find the bullets and raise to 21,000 which he calls quickly. On a flop of Qxx I just open push and get snap called by AQ. I avoid the two outer and add the players circa 80k stack to my 90k.
At this stage there's about 40 players left in the tournament and the 170k represents over 6% of the total chips in play, a playable final table stack so I'm in great shape and must be in the top five in chips.
My stack stayed around this mark until the last level of the day. I don't really remember any major hands for the intermittent period but I folded AK twice pre-flop and I was well behind each time. Going into the last level I was playing very well and totally focused but I had a small dilemma in my head. Anyone who reads my blog regularly will know that over the last year I've had a number of finishes between tenth and twelfth and I have been questioning whether I'm playing over aggressively at this stage of a tournament. I thought about playing passively into the final table but decided thats its just not my style. I also felt I was playing great and I was just in the zone and seeing everything.
So while others were tiring and looking a to make day three I really opened up and had a fantastic level. I got my stack up to 370k mostly taking down small pots. The biggest pot I won over the period was when Fatboydim pushed 55k over my 12k JJ raise with Q10 and I held. Just towards the end of the night a young aggressive English player came to the table and I had 3bet him twice in succession when the following hand occurred.
He bet and I'm bigblind with Ac9c, I considered raising but with our recent history I expected him to push over me so I just called. The flop was an innocuous 7x4x2x and he bet, I knew my A was good and called. The turn brought a Q and I suggested to him that it was a good card for him to second barrel which he did. I just knew he held KJ or K10 and called, the river changed nothing and he took an age to check and my A was good. If he fired again I was calling and when I was scooping the pot he gave me a bit of verbal about being a station which I enjoyed. These internet kids just don't get the soul read.
We finished shortly after and it was decided that the final table would be ten handed. Looking back on the day, I had gone from 26k to 370k and held nearly 15% of the chips in play; a super days work, we had played from 2 PM to 3 AM and I had enjoyed every second.
