Now We're Cooking On Gas

I've made the final of the $500 No Limit, 4 pm here today. I'm second chip leader I think, with 174,000. First place is 80 something thousand, so wish me luck because this is for real money !

I did enjoy myself yesterday. Nothing much happened early on, and after the first break I kicked into all-in mode. I was pleased with the two moves with 23 and 34, both uncalled. The geezer on my left started chirping about it. That works every time but one, I'll have all your chips, the usual. I found KK in early pos and moved in, natch, two or three people chirped about "one move" and the big blind decided to be a hero and called with KQs. Kerching ! "Works every time but one, huh ?" I couldn't resist saying. But he said "nice hand" and we were ok after that, he was alright. It was just funny later on, around the first bubble, when I set him in from the small blind with 27 and he showed me AJ in the big blind and passed. Way to take all my chips !

Anyway, shortly after we hit the money, 54 places paid, I doubled up in the key hand. Playing 1K-2K/300, I made it 6K with Jacks. Geezer called around the button, he'd been fairly active, and we both had about 50K or so. Flop came Jack high. Song tunes going off in my head Mike. So, and this is the key to the whole play I think, I led out for 6K making it look like a weak continuation bet. He made it 10 more. Time for Best Supporting Performance In A Poker Hand. I dwelled a little bit, not too long, called and checked the turn fairly quickly. After about 10 seconds he declared "all in", and 10 nanoseconds after that I called. He turned over 33 and I thought "oh, another set, unlucky mate". However on closer examination there was no 3 on the board and he had shoved the lot in with an underpair. Give him credit for trying I suppose !

Soon after that there was a break and I vowed to just keep doing what I know is right and not worry about how it turned out. And so it turned out pretty well. The situation I had on the last two tables was an absolute dream. It was so fucking sweet. I had double the chips of all the table except one guy, and no one was standing up to me. I was even getting a walk in the big blind about 2/3 of the time. I worked it up to about 210 when a geezer made a gutsy call with KQ, fair play to him, and won the race against my 44. Soon after that we lost players 11 and 10 on the same hand, which was a bit of a shame, but never mind.

So now I have 170, average is about 130, I know one guy from the other table has 200+ and there might be one or two others close to me. Blinds are 2K/4K with a 500 ante so there's a bit of play in it (bugger). I'll just try to take the same attitude into tomorrow. I've played this scenario thousands of times on my software. Literally thousands. I know what to do, so just do it and see what happens. I didn't get much sleep, but I can probably doze a bit through the morning, as we don't kick off till 4. I don't know if there will be any live coverage, I'll try to find out. But it will be 10pm in England, and I wouldn't bother if it was you, so don't feel obliged :-)