More Live Poker

I am trying to stay away from Online poker now. Since I can't tell if it really illeagal or not and then trying to get the money into the site. I am trying to play poker every wednesday night at the local casino.

This week I played a home game. The tournament was a $25 buyin. We started with $5000 in chips. I played tight and when I felt I had the hand, I would call, raise and go all-in. One of my all-ins was with pocket 2's. The other person had pocket 8's. I flopped a 2 and a 2 came up on the river. I was able to double up with that hand. On one hand the flop came up 444 so I lead out with a big raise. I wanted to give the idea I had the other 4. The guy next to me looked at me and told me I was bluffing. He said he knew it but yet he just couldn't call me to find out since I put out a big raise. He went ahead and folded. One of the people across the table told the dealer to hold up the deck of cards so everyone could see the bottom of the deck. When he did that the other 4 was at the bottom. Someone was paying attention and at least he didn't give information to the guy I was trying to bluff.

I did make it to the final table. There were 6 of us and the tournament was paying 1st to 5th. I was #4 in chip stack. I have AQ and the the big stack decided to call me. I ended up getting all of my chips in the pot and on the flop came x10x. He now has three 10's for a set. The turn was an x and the river was an A. I went out in 6th place.

I should have stayed away from the all-in and not play with the big blind to get myself into a situation of having to go all-in so close to the money.

Playing Poker Again

My second live tournament experience went well. I showed up at the casino at 6:15 afor the 7:00Pm tournament. I placed my name on the list and was number 20. We ended up having 54 players tonight. They broke us up into two groups of 27. We would play until we reached 20 and then the next group would play until they reached 20. I was in the first group. I was in seat 9 next to the dealer. Having not played in a live tournament since February I wanted to play tight and would not use the all-in like last time. I wanted to get into the main tournament of 40 people. I was able to play and win a few hands to build my chip count. I even threw away AK at one point. My best hand of the night was when we were down to 21 players. I was dealt AA. I called to see a flop and the player in seat 3 went all-in. I called immediately. We turned over the cards and he had Q9. The flop came xx9, the turn was x and the river was an x. I had eliminated the 21st person. We were down able to go on break until the next 27 were down to 20. We played for an hour to eliminate 7 people. The next group played 1 1/2 hours to get down to 20. The 40 people are now set to finish the tournament. The payout was for 1st to 5th. During the rest of my time at the table I was not getting anything to play. My 11,100 chip count was starting to dwindle down. I picked up a hand A8 and figured I needed to move in and the flop came A67. I moved all-in and one person called me. He had A10 and the next two cards did not help me. I went out 26/54. I have to keep from going all-in and learn to stop playing the Aces with a low kicker. If I would have just raised or called with the hand to see the next card I could have remained in the tournament.