When you're hot, you're hot

Thirty other players and MOJO paid $110 and entered the Horseshoe Casino's Sunday Super Stack tournament. The blind levels were only 20 minutes, but players started with 20,000 in chips.

Only five were to get paid (we voted to give sixth place $100), and at the final table I started out card dead. A situation like this is a tap dance -- you can't let your chips get too low, but you have to be careful. It's a minefield out there and one misstep and you blow yourself up. Others who were not so cautious as I was started busting out.

When we were down to six, a short stack moved all in and a bigger stack moved all in behind him. I looked at my hole cards to see: ♠A ♠J. This is a great hand, but it's a trap hand, and I folded. Sure enough, the bigger stack had A-K and I would have been crushed. A few orbits later, the same thing happened (two all-ins to me) and I had ♥K ♥Q and had to fold. Again, one of the villains had A-K and the other had Q-J suited. Folding was again the best play.

When you've been card-dead, it's tempting to play hands like this, but you have to resist. In an all-in situation, you want to be the one going all in, not calling an all-in with a marginal hand, especially with two all-ins.

Finally, when we were down to four, the blinds were 16,000/8,000/1000 and the UTG made a min raise to 32K. I had ♠J ♣J and moved all in. The big blind was the masive chip leader and he thought and thought and moved all in himself to drive out the first guy. I was happy to see he had A-J (!!) and my hand held. I was now the chip leader, but we were all pretty close.

"Let's chop," suggested one of the players and so we did.

Above: This old-time limo sits in front of the Horseshoe Casino Tunica.

Above: This was the shot clock when play ceased in the Horseshoe Sunday poker tournament.

Photos taken with my P&S.