A bad run - followed by a small MTT win.

As mentioned in my previous post, I was doing very well over a 2 day stretch, then did bad at PLO. My poor run continued on Saturday and Sunday afternoon - losing at SNGs, PLO, and NL holdem. Nothing seemed to go right.

Sunday night, I entered the bugsys round 2 tourney. Only 89 entrants, so not a huge field, but I won it for a modest little ($710) score.

The tourney was incredible, as I built a nice chip lead and pummeled everyone from there. It is a really interesting tourney since there are really 2 bubbles. A final table bubble (which is also when the money starts), and a bubble because 4 players get freerole entries into a tourney that pays 2 WSOP seats. When we were down to 2 tables, I moved from 200K to 400K (about 1.2 million chips in play). I maintained at about 400K, perhaps moving to 450K when there were 6 left.

With 6 left, however, I really picked on short stacks. One player made a mistake of saying how he "bubbled" at 5 last time and how it really sucked. Big mistake. I raised him first in every time (he was bb when I was sb). Others were way too tight also. The general trend went: I chip up to 600K or so, then lose 100K back when all in with T5 vs. AJ, etc.). I was at 550K, however, when I started getting a mild run of cards - KTo, QTs, etc. With no big stacks (over 200K) and with the bb at 30K, I pushed every hand. Without seeing one turn, I was up over 800K with 5 left. Then I pushed 96s and was called by A7 and A8. Even then, I only risked 120K chips. When I flopped a 9, I knocked out both players and went to 3-handed play with a 90% of the chips in play. On the first hand 3-handed, the other two confronted each other and we were down to 2. Then I got K8s on the next hand (I think), and went all in (opponent had 180K and bb was 40K - no brainer decision). He had 55 but I won the flip and the tourney.

My play at the final 2 tables with the chip lead deviated a lot from "by the book" strategy. I might try to post the HH here - it was a really fun tourney to play.