In Your Neighborhood

We got a night at home last night, and after posting yesterday I decided to jump on a tournament.  The problem was it was already 9:00 when I decided I wanted to play.  All of the tournaments running had over an hour of late registration left.  I got on anyway thinking that I would get knocked out before the late registration was over and go to bed.

That didn't work out.  I played overly aggressive in a 2.20 knockout game and started getting calls at the wrong times and building a massive stack.  We got down to 3 tables by the time late registration ended and I was 1st in chips by a mile.  My plans on sleeping were over ruled. 

I got moved to a table with several aggressive players, so I let them do all the work, while I waited on a hand to play back at them.  I got very few good starting hands and by the time we made 2 tables the players were catching up to my chip stack which was still over 100 BB's. 

I padded my stack a little more by the time we reached the final table and was now 2nd in chips.  I was looking for spots to play at the shorter stacks but I was 2 behind the chip leader.  He was raising every hand and I didn't have anything that I wanted to call to see the flop. 

It got down to 4 of us left.  Three of us had similar stacks and the aggressive guy had a massive stack. I had been patient long enough.  I came over the top of him with nothing.  I paired mid pair on the board and when he checked I bet.  He called.  River was a blank below my pair so I bet again, thinking he would fold.  He called again.  I thought I might be in trouble at this point and when an ace fell on the river I checked behind him.  He had low pair. 

With that little boost, he backed off and I was able to play at the small stacks for a couple rounds increasing my stack size and decreasing theirs.

The final table was lasting forever, almost 2 hours by the time we got down to the final 2.  He had a 2 to 1 chip stack against me.  I started getting aggressive again and it would work until he would catch, then I would go back to my original chip count when we began heads up.  We did this over and over for the next 45 minutes.  Finally he went all in and I had AKo.  He had A9.  3 9 9 hit on the flop.  Game over.

It was nearly 3:00 in the morning when I got to bed.  The game lasted way longer than I thought it would but I was not giving up.  I had put on my headphones, turned on some music, put my hoodie over my head and went about grinding all night and early morning.  It felt good.