Sometimes, you’ve just gotta believe…
So what if it was only a $5 SNG? When you go three handed into the 150/300 blind level, you know you’re playing with a couple people who are taking things seriously.
And I played brilliantly for the last half of the tournament.
In the first half, I essentially folded outside the blinds, took a check/called pot with a middle pair of eights with 78s in the big blind, and otherwise just bided my time.
About halfway through, I made a mistake. I limped in with
the hammer, as I have a hard time throwing that hand away most of the time (thanks
Grubby), and tried to make a play at the pot with bottom pair, but lost a lot of chips when another player came back over the top. There was a Queen on the board, and I guarantee you he was holding Q9 or Q8.
So, with six of us left, I was only holding 555 chips, and still held roughly that same amount when two more players fell.
We had a chip monster on the table. Everything was going his way. He had well over 4k with four of us left in, and my 555 represented low stack (by about 400).
That’s where I started going all
Mean Gene on their asses. I pushed the pace unmercifully, folding the absolute junk outside the blinds, but still catching enough on the fringes to push all-in at least once per orbit, usually taking the blinds down with me.
It was beautiful. Without contesting a hand, I worked up to about 900. That’s when Lady Luck started flopping the cards my way.
KQs? I’ll push all-in. Low stack calls, he’s got AT, I catch the straight to his two pair. Buh-bye. I was killing these guys. They were folding off to me left and right, but even when they felt able to call, I just kept catching.
I went from 555 with six to go, to big time chip leader in the final three. The third place finisher was ticked off, when my QJs beat his big slick by rivering a Queen. Things were just going my way.
That’s when the decisive hand hit. 27s.
How many times do you get a hand that you’d normally fold, but you have such a commanding chip lead that you convince yourself you’re going to catch? This was one of those times. I
knew I’d land with that hand. That’s the way it had worked all game, all I had to do was move the slider to the right and click “raise.”
With his last 2000 in chips, he turned over AKo.
I caught my two, he caught nothing, game over.
It was beautiful. Sometimes, you’ve just gotta believe.