Didn't get my money's worth

I went to Harrah's for the Friday night tournament.

Welcome to Harrah's Casino in Tunica MS.


In the background is one of the Harrah's hotels.


You can't be a pansy if you want to play in a tough poker tournament.

There is a poker tournament that will be going on at the Goldstrike for the next two weeks called the World Poker Open, a presumptuous name, to say the least. It started today and will last for 16 days with various tournaments each day (beginning at 12 noon), including (at the end) the championship, a $5,000 buy-in event. You can see the complete schedule as a PDF, if you click here.

Anyone who likes to read the poker forums at 2+2, here is a link there where they discuss this tournament -- just click here.

I didn't know how that tournament would affect the one at Harrah's, but 48 runners signed up.

We started with 10,000 in chips. This sounds like a lot, but they move the blinds and antes up quickly. I only played four or five pots all night. Early, I had ♦10 ♥10 in the big blind. With the blinds at 50/100, UTG raised to 375 and another guy called. I decided to just call and reevaluate after the flop. If overcards came, it would be awkward. In fact, the flop was ♣10 ♣5 ♠5, not bad for me. I checked and the UTG made a CB of 750 which was called by the other guy. I check-raised to 2,000 and UTG folded, but the other guy moved all in. Huh? I called and he turned over ♦6 ♦5 for trip 5s.

That moved me up to 17,000. I dribbled down to about 14,000 and a guy in front of me moved all in for 6,500. I had ♦A ♣K and moved all in myself to isolate. He turned over ♣6 ♥6 and we were off to the races. I like my play, even though his hand held up, because it was a good chance to chip up, but I would still have chips to play if I lost.

I was able to tread water, and in fact, moved up a little. With the blinds at 500/1000/100, I again had pocket 10s. An early position guy raised to 2675 (where do they get these amounts?). My M was about 3, so I just went ahead and moved in. If he were behind me, I would have gone for the stop-and-go, but that didn't apply here. He called and turned over the cooler: ♠J ♣J, and that was it for me. We had started at 6 p.m., it was only about 8:20 p.m., and I was finished.

You know how when you play online, you can click on "statistics" and it will tell you how many flops you've seen and other things like that. They say a good number is around 25%, depending on what stage of the tournament you are in. I didn't have those numbers available, obviously, but I'm guessing I saw less than 15% of the flops (probably more like 10%), which is way too low. I don't think I got my $100 worth. When you play that tight, your chip stack never gets very big. You can't really overcome any bad luck, and you have to win the coin flips (my AK losing to 66). If I had won that, I wouldn't have pushed on the second 10/10 hand, but that's poker.

Best wishes for a good weekend to both my readers.


I took this shot of the welcome sign on my way home. My camera doesn't do a very good job in low light. Maybe it's time to upgrade?