Poker Pubbing Again

The summertime is fairly slow for me.  With no basketball, bowling, or StarCraft leagues, I'm left with just my Tuesday pool league, which leaves me with a little more free time than I'm used to.  For the summer, I picked up another pool league that plays on Monday nights at Fox and the Hound.  It's a 9-ball league (Tuesdays are 8-ball) and the team consists of 3 players from my Tuesday night team.  I decided to only co-captain this team, since I don't plan on being there every week when my fall and spring leagues start up.  So far, we're doing really well: currently in 1st place by several points with only 2 weeks to go.

With the increase in pool playing time, I've been spending a fair amount of time at Clicks Billiards Hall, where APA members can get unlimited pool for free.  It turns out, that the Tucson Poker Pub hosts free nightly tournaments on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays.  You may recall that was playing weekly poker at the Frog n Firkin on Tuesdays a few years ago and even played in their semi-annual 2-day mega-tournament where I took 11th place out of 190 players.

Anyhoo, playing at Clicks has gotten me into playing poker again.  It's also nice that I can shoot pool before or after a tournament, so I can make it a full night of doing something.  I've invited several friends out to play poker/pool with me: Kat, Teqas, Gene, Jen.  I plan on playing for the whole summer until bowling league starts up again in early September.

A few weeks ago, I won a tournament at Clicks and qualified for their Monthly "Trip-to-Vegas" Tournament.  The grand prize is a paid trip to Vegas (includes room and travel) and seat to play in a tournament in Vegas.  Not a bad prize at all, but unfortunately that is the only prize at this monthly tournament.

 

The tournament was held yesterday at RJ's Replays and consisted of 60 players (about 7 tables of 8).  We started at 6pm and my second hand off the bat was pocket aces, although unfortunately no one else really caught anything to make a nice enough pot from it.

The night continued and I would win and lose pots here and there, but I never found myself with a large chip stack.  In fact, I found myself playing small stack poker most of the night, carefully picking my spots and not trying to chase too many hands.  However, tournament poker is all about survival, and surviving in tournaments is something I do very well.  A lot of people will burn out mentally after a few hours, but mentally I don't ever feel drained.  3 hours into the tournament, the blinds were starting to increase dramatically as people were getting anxious.  It became an all-in fest since there were so many people left and the organizers were trying to wrap things up quicker.  I continued to pick my spots carefully and eventually found myself at the final table!

All-in poker is very scary, especially when calls are made before the flop even comes out.  Eventually, I found myself in the all-in situation with the blinds so large.  I went in with A10, but one of the larger stacks was already committed in the blind, so it was an easy call for him.  I ended up losing to 79 when he hit his straight on the river and I finished 6th place for the tournament.

After 4 hours of poker, I definitely had a fun time and met some cool and fun people along the way.  I look forward to playing more during the summer and hopefully I can play in more big tournaments in the future!