cold-decked, but not too upset

As the reader can probably infer from the title, I didn't end up winning the Monday tournament tonight! However, I'm not too upset with my play, and I'm still the big points leader. After a brutal stack-off to Andrew early on, I scraped my way back for a while. One of the players had to leave the game and his stack was just sitting there getting blinded off.

However, I was in a tricky spot! There were six players left, including an absent Chris, and both he, Dale, and I were on short money. I tried to think about whether it made more sense to go for the aggressive, marginal all-in short stack strategy, or to simply try to wait Chris out in order to place in the points. A points finish was strategically significant to me, since if I went out with no points and Chip won, he could gain nine points on me, which I would have been far from comfortable with. Fortunately, I picked up a pretty good run of cards and was able to take down the blinds uncontested quite a few times, allowing me a little bit of breathing room. Chris eventually was blinded out, and I had made at least five points. Thus, I had guaranteed that even if Chip won the tournament (he actually came in second), he could gain at most four points against me.

The final hand for me came when it folded to Andrew on the button and he doubled the bet to $3. Eric folded his small blind and I went all-in on the big blind with AK of clubs for $13.50 on top of Andrew's $3. He decided to call me with the ace-jack, which I was excited about until the board came 8 3 Q J Q and I was out of chips and out of the tournament in fifth place. Still, I got my money in pretty good throughout the night and just got into some unavoidable cold-deck situations. To give you an idea, here's tonight's bad beat story:

Me : 99
Andrew: K5

Flop: 5 9 5
Turn: 6
River: 5

It was the second time in this year's Monday tournament that I'd flopped nines full against Andrew's trips, and he hit a sick one-outer to make quads. Pretty frustrating! What's worse is that after the flop came out, there's no way I could have made him fold his hand. He was destined to hit his quads on the river, since there's no way a player who plays loose poker is folding trips in that situation. Oh, well!

Still, Chip gained only three points on me, and there are now only sixteen or seventeen Monday tournaments left in the year. Ideally, I'll be mostly gaining points on Chip, or allowing him only small gains those nights when I'm less fortunate. Here are the updated points for the tournament:

Me (171 pts.)
Chip (139 pts.)
Lee (121 pts.)
Chris (120 pts.)
Marc (107 pts.)
Eric (99 pts.)
Jake (92 pts.)
Dale (88 pts.)
Andrew (75 pts.)
Lori (65 pts.)
Justin (14 pts.)
Daniel & Brent (11 pts. each)
Mark (9 pts.)
Randy (8 pts.)
Jesse (6 pts.)

As you can see, those players below tenth place in points are for all intents and purposes out of the running at this point. It would take not only consistent wins, but also consistently bad results for almost everyone else playing - pretty much an impossibility, especially since a lot of the players at the bottom end of the spectrum aren't regulars. It pays to play.