Back in first place

Monday night went pretty well. It was a small game, but there were lots of rebuys in there (fortunately, none of them came from me). I stacked Eric more than four times, in fact (twice with pocket eights).

However, though I came in first place in the tournament, I had to survive a few tough hands to get there. In one pot, I held the and made a tough call when Eric check-raised all in on a flop of . He showed the ! I had him out-kicked! When the ace of diamonds fell on fourth street, I was going to win the pot with any card other than a five, and split with a four or trey. However, though the turn was an irrelevant , the river came , and after cursing my bad luck, I had some focusing to do to avoid tilt after taking the three-outer beat on the river.

Later, I was able to stack Chip and force him out in third place. This was good for me since I came into Monday night one point behind him in the overall jackpot standings. I think a big leak in Chip's game is the way that he plays the short stack. He sacrifices way too much of his stack, and doesn't go all-in enough to steal the blinds. At the $0.75 / 1.50 level of blinds, he had only $4.50 left after posting his big blind. I had about $50 in chips, and so when Chris folded his button to me, I raised chip all-in with the 84 offsuit. Chip called with a jack high, and we both hit a pair on the flop, but the 8 came off on 4th street giving me two pair and knocking him out.