Card dead at midnight

Decided to go over to Bay 101 tonight and play a midnight tourney. Buy in $120 with 49 players.

I decided early on that I wanted to gamble and try to chip up fast or go home early with my aggressive small-ball strategies, except this time around I had a interesting table. Not tough players at all, but a bunch of show-boaters who run down the clock in every hand they were in. I was getting a little annoyed by some of the antics that were going on at the table. Some guy kept saying "the nuts" when he showed his hand, when it was only like a pair. He would also do it when other people showed their hands. The dealers kept getting confused as hell and took longer than usual to look at the hands showed, so there would be no mistakes.

This really sucked, as it wasted tourney time and blinds were being raised unevenly between the players. I didn't even get to play a hand in the second levels because of the show-boating! (blinds get raised every 12 minutes).

Throughout the whole tourney, I was basically card-dead with my best hands being AK, 88, 10 10 and a few KJ, KQ, AJ in bad positions. I missed every flop and couldn't even small-ball draws as people just kept over betting the pot by going all in.

I thought I could easily trapped and set things up, but just never had the hands to trap. I'm so sad that I haven't looked down to see AA, KK, QQ, JJ at all in the tourney.

Some mistakes might have been calling a big raise with 36, 27 and 56. I guess I was hoping to get lucky.

I outplayed ppls on couple of flops and think I made good reads, which is what kept me alive for so long. But, I pretty much threw away my aggressive style because didn't want to face the players who had one move. They even sucked me into their game, and I was pushing all in with hands like A5 and KQ, which doubled me up.

I busted in 16th place holding KQ of diamonds and was drawing dead with pocket 9s hit a set on the flop.

What I learned was that I should stick to my game, even when faced with interesting players. So many hands I wanted to see the flop with and something told me I should raise, so I could see a "cheap" flop, instead I opt to limp in and had to fold to big re-raises, or I called big raises and missed.

I'm hoping I will stick to game plan next time I play.

Note to self: Stick to your game, no matter how stupid the other players are playing. Don't get lured into their "game".