The geezers beat up on me

I played in the WSOP circuit event Senior's tournament tonight. To play, you had to be 50 year or older. Ahem, well they let me in to play without checking my ID and I'm quite upset about that.

The tournament structure was excellent. We started with 6000 in chips and levels were 30 minutes. I had high hopes. Early on I saw there were 276 players, but they were letting in alternates and I didn't hear a final tally. I can say there was lots of gray hair. My hair is brown, but it has some gray in it, too, come to think of it.

When the blinds were 50/100, the lady in front of my opened for 300 and I checked my hole cards to see: ♠Q ♥Q. What would you do? There are different ways to play this, but I decided just to call. If an ace comes and she makes a CB, I get to watch her body language before deciding how to proceed. Also, there are players to act behind me. If went fold, fold to a guy who raised to it 2500. W-O-W. The lady who bet 300 thought and folded. Now, what would you do? I didn't have a great read on the guy, but he looked like a solid citizen. I'm not sure what the huge overbet is all about, but I folded. I never found out what he had.

I did a lot of folding, actually. When you play the seniors, it doesn't pay to get too aggressive unless you expect to get called down. Bluffing is not a good idea, but you can value bet them to death. I had A-K, K-Q suited, and J-J once to win small pots.

My only misstep was when I was in the big blind with ♦10 ♦9. The blinds were 300/600/50. A guy came in for a min-raise and so I called. The flop was 10-8-6 rainbow. I had top pair and a gutshot str8 draw. I checked and he made the expected CB of 1200. I check-raised him to 2600 figuring that would take down the pot. Instead, he moved all in and I had to fold. Yuck-o.

I did a good job of playing position poker. Because I had folded so much, when I did make a bet, it was given respect. Even so, I never really built much of a stack. I think 11,000 was my high mark.

Here's my bust-out hand. The blinds were 400/800/75 and I was in the small blind with around 5500 (having just paid my BB). My hole cards were ♠Q ♦7. It was folded to the button who called, and so did I. The BB checked. The flop was Q-4-2 and I bet out for 2500 into a 3100 pot. The BB folded and the button called. The turn was ♥7, giving me two pair, but putting three hearts on the board. I put the rest of my chips in and was called. The button had played king rag, both of them hearts. I had four outs to full house, but that only happens on TV I think. In any event, it didn't happen for me.

It was 9:30 and I didn't feel like playing anymore. I stopped at Wendy's on my way home and picked up a salad. My poker may suck tonight, but at least I'm eating healthily.

Here's a shot of the playing area. It's a photo of about half the players in what they call the Event Center. There were (EDIT) roughly 500 players in the noon event, and nearly 300 in the 4 p.m. (which actually didn't start until 5 p.m.) game. Sorry it's blurry -- I was using my cheap camera.



Here's what we call the shot clock. It's a big flat panel TV screen that shows the amount of time left in a particular level, what the blinds (and antes) are and some other information. I'm not sure what's up with the pink.



After I busted out of the tournament, I wandered back to the poker room (other side of the building) near where I parked. Business was booming, as you can see in this image: