First MTT Final Table

[Darby]

It was only a $2 buy in on Royal Vegas Poker with 324 people, but it was awesome. I finished 8th, misplaying a hand at the final table and busted out. This might get long, but it is all the key hands.

2nd hand I get pocket 6's and flop a set. Someone with top 2 pair pushes in and my sixes hold up. I double up early. I play tight for a while, not playing many hands, and I build my stack up and am consistently ranked about 15-20th in the tourney. A big hand comes up where I call an all in of a guy with about half of my stack with AK. He had been raising my big blind every time and I called. He had 99 -- more than I expected. But I hit a K on the flop and doubled up again.

I was sitting at around 7K chips with the blinds near 100-200 and took a huge hit to my stack when I held pocket kings. I raised 4x BB to 600 to go and got reraised all in by someone with 5 grand. I called, and he had A-Q. The flop gave him an A and he took a good portion of my chips. So I am down to about 2500 chips. At this point there were only about 80 people left. A few hands later, I get K-Qs in MP. I make it 1000 to go hoping to take the blinds, and the person behind me pushes. Another person calls. I am down to 1300 something and decide to call. Well, They have JJ and 99. I flop a Q and triple up back to about 7 grand. An orbit or so later(I really dont remember exactly what the blinds were at) I caught QQ and made it 2 grand to go. Two all in pushes and I call. Up against AK and 88. My queens hold up and I triple up to nearly 22,000 chips.

From there, I coast into the top 20. I steal a few pots, but mostly lay low and sit on premium hands to make it to the final table. Finally, it gets there and a short stack busts out quickly in 10th. I busted another guy in 9th place when I had TPTK and he held bottom pair - ace kicker. I am up to about 65,000 chips and above average at the table. A little while later I make a mistake that busts me. Ill describe the hand and then what I think I did wrong. I get AKs UTG+1. With the blinds at 2,000-4,000 I raise and only make it 8,000 to go. Only 2x the blind but still a resonable portion of anyones stack. A re-raise makes it 16,000 to go. I re-raise to something like 40,000 to go.. He pushes, I call. He has QQ. Flop is a barren desert. Turn gives me a heart draw. River....................8 of clubs. I am gone. At first I was just excited about making the final table, but then thinking about it, I realized I misplay that hand. This is my thinking. Why did I make it 40,000 to go? That was 2/3rds of my stack. Its push or fold there, and I should have put him to a decidion for almost his entire stack( he had me covered by about 3,000). Oh well, I only got 18 bucks out of it, but to be honest it was for fun, until my Empire Acct. gets activated and I play the MTT's there.

Thanks for reading it, and thanks for all the advice I gather from this site.

[Radashack]

Congrats, don't beat yourself up too much about the last hand, thats the way it usually goes when you make your first FT . I'm sure they'll be more to come for ya .

[SteveO]

Nice job, but it hurts to misplay that last hand doesn't it?

He made the final table too, so you have to assume that he has some idea of how to play. He had you covered by T3000. He hit you with a big re-raise pre-flop. What did you think he had? That screams big pair ie. AA-QQ or at that point, maybe medium pair, JJ-88 to me. In every case you are behind.

Your first instinct maybe correct if you decided to go with that hand you should have pushed AI and put him to a decision. He probably would have still made the call and you would have lost anyway.

Keeping in mind that AK is a drawing hand, you should have just smooth called the re-raise and if the flop did not bring any help, it would have been easy to get away from and you would still have plenty of chips.

I say it was misplayed because it sounds like you were in good shape in terms of chip count. Never get all your money in w/ AK facing a re-raise unless you have position or are pounding on a short stack that won't hurt you too much.

[Darby]

Yeah I know, I realized it, the thing was, it was getting late (3 a.m.) and I had to be up at 6:00 am so i was getting a little distracted

all things considered, it was a good experience