The 6th hour
Hot on the heels of my laydown and wondering if Id just made a bad decision seriously affecting my chances, the blinds rose to 150/300 with a 25 ante. With a stack of 3.5K it was getting serious and before very long at all I was going to have to be in all in or fold mode. I needed a hand. And soon.
Unfortunately my previous card dead hour gave birth to another card dead hour and again I was folding hand after hand of
absolute pish just when I needed a hand the most. I stayed calm and told myself the hand would come but it didn’t seem to be and I was getting down to near 2K or so, pretty critical circumstances for sure, with only 7 or 8 big blinds to my name. I decided I was going to have to simply make an all in move with something rather marginal to stay alive and just hope for folds or a lucky double through if they called.
I finally picked up something at least approaching a playable hand in A8s. I was in the cut off and Tony Jones was the big blind as I had mentioned before I was keen to steal because I knew he was tight. With everyone folding to me I had no choice but to put myself all in. They all folded luckily and I mucked face up to let them see what I had. I really wanted someone to call when I did get a real hand and if you’re in a ‘should I or shouldn’t I’ call decision with AJ or 99 or something and all the real info you’ve got on someone is that they had stolen with A7o and went all in with A8s I think you’d sway towards calling for sure.
A short while later with a dwindling 2.2K stack I picked up AK of diamonds – hallelujah, praise the poker Gods! I was in mid position and someone had already called in early so more money for me hopefully. I moved all in as you have to. To my surprise Tony Jones Mr Poker Million called my bet and the original caller said that he was going to call if Tony hadn’t. He asked Tony if he had a pair and when I saw him nod for no I knew I had it, we both flipped and he had A10s. Maybe me showing those hands previously had counted for something. The board brought no help for either of us and I lightly hit the leather around the poker table as my AK held up and I had won an all in, well thank god for that. One of the fundamental things I wanted to achieve (other than the obvious) before the tournament began was to win an all in and I had done it and against a reasonably famous player to boot which is always nice.
I picked up pocket 10s and stole the blinds just before the dinner break, and went off to each some rubbish pasta (for Carbo mind energy of course) with around 4.5K but at least I was still in for the fight.