The 7th hour
I heard there was around 200 players remaining, I kinda hoped there was less! I returned to my slight disappointment to blinds of 200/400 and a raised ante of 50. I think
Ladbrokes wanted to start knocking out players more quickly and that would certainly get the job done to a tee! Each round of poker was going to cost 1.1K in total which aint too pretty when your sitting on a 4.5K stack! What I needed was a card rush and to be honest I felt like I kinda deserved one, after all in 6 hours of poker all I had picked up in the way of hands was 1 AA, 3 lots of AK, 2 AQ and 1 pocket 10s. So only one premium pocket pair in a total of 6 hours play.
Oh what had happened to all the pocket Kings, Queens and Jacks I get on the net! I ordered them for dessert after my pasta carbonara dinner is where they went and I got served them in plentiful supply for the next hour and a half. And they tasted sweet.
As play resumed I decided that I was best to be all in or fold pre-flop even though I technically still had 11 big blinds left. Usually I would only adopt the ‘All in or Fold strategy’ when I had 9 big blinds or less you see. But with antes involved I figured now was the time and if I doubled up again then I could start playing. As there was over 1K guaranteed in the pot every hand I felt that was a pretty good strategy as even all folding is a good result for my stack.
Very quickly I found pocket 8s under the gun first to act. I didn’t like doing it but I pushed all in. With 9 players to act behind me it was a heart thumping 20 or 30 seconds or so because I certainly didn’t want a call. I was going to be in a coin flip situation or an big underdog to a higher pair if anyone called for sure. After 1 player on the button had a think and then folded, the blinds threw in and Id stolen the 1.1K. I threw the 8s across for people to see, maybe it would come in handy if I picked up a big pair finally and someone would call me and find themselves in a bad spot.
The next round after paying blinds and antes I was in exactly the same predicament again under the gun but this time with the Big Daddy – Pocket Aces, finally a sweet hand, the sweetest of all! I moved all in again quite quickly. I’m not sure if this was the best play in actual fact. With the nuts I could have raised to something like 1.5K and moved in the rest whatever the flop came. That way I would be more likely to get action and hopefully someone with top pair or a draw would call me after the flop. However, I hoped since there were 9 players to act and I had showed 88 before one of them would call and would inevitably be disappointed with what I would show them.
They all folded. Bugger.
I picked up the Snowmen pocket 8s again but with a raiser in early position before me I chickened out a bit and folded. Id rather move all in with that when I knew I wasn’t necessarily going to be called and I would have been called almost certainly from the raiser. I also picked up 66 which has served me particularly well in the past but again a player had already raised before me. I considered moving in due to the mystical power of the pocket of six but declined. If id called I would have rivered a 6 and doubled up though, I know it!