Poker Tourney at KahNeeTa

I played in a no-limit hold em tournament with 24 players at Kahneeta last Thursday evening. I made it to the final table, but I was short-stacked when I got there. I decided to play pretty aggressively from the start, mostly because you only get about 1900 chips for the buy-in and the blinds start at 25/50 and go up every 15 minutes. In other words, it is not a tourney wherein you want to play too conservatively. The blinds will eat you up in no time.

My aggressive strategy worked pretty well at first -- I tripled my buy-in after about 45 minutes of play, and a lot of those chips came from a big hand I won after calling a raise pre-flop with an 8-7 offsuit in the pocket, something I don't do very often (I bet heavily after the flop hit J-8-4 and got a couple of callers, then got these callers to fold after betting very heavily when a 7 hit on the turn). My problem was that after I had accumulated about 6000 in chips, I decided to try to protect my stack and play more conservatively.

That was a big mistake, mostly because I didn't get dealt any premium hands while I was in my conservative mode. When we consolidated to one final table, I had 4500 in chips left and the blinds were 200/400. After a few hands of crappy cards, I got dealt AK offsuit in early position and decided it was time to make a move. I raised 2000 and got one caller. After the flop came up Q-low-low with no flush draw on the board, the one remaining player checked and I went all in. My opponent thought awhile, then called me (he had 200 less in his stack, so I got 200 back from my all-in). He had K-J of clubs, which made me very happy because I had one of his Ks covered was therefore way ahead in the hand. He needed either a jack to beat me or two running clubs. Well, he got the two running clubs to make his flush.

My 200 in remaining chips didn't last long after that. It was disappointing, because a double up at that point would have given me about 9000 in chips and put me back in the hunt. The guy was obviously an inexperienced player, because he called all his chips in without having anything in his hand.

Kahneeta is reportedly closing down its casino soon. I definitely want to play in at least one more tourney there before it closes. The next time, I won't make the mistake of easing up if I accumulate a sizable chip stack.