Wednesday Deepstack 9-5

Here it is Wednesday and it is time to play the Deepstack tournament. Playing in this one means a lot to me as it is the tune up to play in the Wildhorse events. I know this is only three to four tables but some of the players also play at the Wildhorse Round-ups and it is a good test of my skills. We start with three tables and ours is short handed as some of the players are still eating and not at the table. I remain at the starting stack for quite some time. I got to the first break and was around the T$20,000 starting stack level. When I got to the second break, which was new for me, I was still around the mid T$20,000 to T$30,000 area. I was moving slowly but still in this tournament. Lately I have been lasting until the mid part of the tournament and was very happy to get to the final table. Now that I have reached this level it was important to me to cash. My eye was on the top three spots. I figured at some point the table would propose some sort of cash to the lower places. When we got to six players there was a proposal to give some money to the 4th through 6th place and the chip leader did not want to do this. We continued on playing. I continued to play my cards and be patient with what I needed to accomplish. I needed to stay away from the all in and only get involved if I knew I had the top cards. We made it to five players and the chip leader still would not give any money to that place. When we made it to four players he finally agreed to give $75 to 4th place. Once that person went out I was excited to get to the top three players and knew I could open up my game a little bit more and see what would happen. I made it to heads up and now was looking at a better payout. My final hand was A7 and I went all in. I was called and he turned over Q8. The flop comes xQA. The turn was the 8 and the river was an x. I took home $445 for the effort. I am very happy with my play during this tournament in that I didn’t give up and I felt I was mentally focused on the tables. This is my second largest cash playing poker and it felt good to get back to that feeling of playing well. In this tournament I learned that it is a battle between people sitting at the table. This is where strategies are played out and timing is critical. Your chips are your army and you have to move them at the right time. Have a fun day……