| Re: My ToC - This Weekend!
My note-taking didn't go exactly as planned. I fought through the last half of the day with a splitting headache and had bad results all day, so I was off doing other things much of the time. Nothing like being the host and going out early. Fortunately it doesn't happen too much to me.
My demises. We played 2 semi-final games that were both T5,000 with blinds starting at 25-50.
Game 1: Card dead most of the time and every flop I did take was a complete blank for me and any steal attempt I made ran into resistance. Ended up fairly short-stacked toward the end of Level 4 at 100-200. UTG I get AK. I raise to 600 and get called by the BB. Flop comes A96. BB checks and I bet about 700. He checkraises me all-in which is about another 1500 to me. I called and he turned over Gretzky 99. Great. Blank-blank and I'm gone. I probably should have known it if I would have thought a little longer. He would have just called with any ace or draw I think. The check-raise should have screamed trips to me, but hey, I had TPTK, that has to win, right?
Game 2: Doing a little better, but still on a medium to smallish stack with 5 left. I get crippled on a steal attempt with KJ where one of the short stacks woke up with AA. A few hands later I'm in the BB with K9. It's folded around and the SB limps. I push for about another 1,000 and get called by KT. Board blanks out and bye-bye again.
Final: I start out on the 2nd short stack for the final with about 5,500 chips where the table average is 10,000. I pretty much maintained my stack for the first several levels. Won a few pots, but couldn't get anything big. I caught QQ 3 times in this game and lost EVERY time with them. Early on I raised with them. Flop comes with a K. I make a continuation bet hoping no one has a K and get called in 2 places. Turn comes an ace! Yep, we're done with this hand. Later on I get them again, raise, and get one called. Flop comes K again and the player to my right bets out. I think for awhile and eventually muck them and got bluffed off that one. I wasn't too happy about that because I gave serious consideration to pushing back over the top on him. My final hand, with QQ again in the SB. Blinds at 150-300 with a 25 ante and 6 players left. MP player raises to 1,000. Button calls and I push for 3,500 more. MP folds and the button calls with AK. We all know where this is going, right? I get rivered by an ace and my day is over.
One other interesting hand that I can remember. Still in the final game with 5 players left. One of the guys made what I thought was a great laydown of AA. He raised pre-flop and got 2 callers. Flop came down Q96. He was in position. First player makes a bet, 2nd player raises all-in. He thought for awhile and threw the aces away. Player 1 called and showed 66 for trip 6's. Player 2 had AQ. The only bad part is the guy with the aces would have rivered a flush! I still think it was a great laydown though.
It was a good day, I just wish I had felt better. We started around 11:45 and finished maybe a little after 11:00. If I had felt better we probably had enough interest in a cash game following the tournies as well, but I just wanted to go to bed! Thinking of how I'd do things differently, I can't really come up with much. I think it all worked out pretty well. The only thing I will probably change is getting rid of the antes in the blinds schedule. I like the concept of having them, but they just really seem to slow the game down. You have to make sure everyone has theirs in and then the dealer has to avoid all of the antes laying around while dealing. In this format, all they really do is accelerate when the short stacks have to start making moves. To keep things moving, I think the game would be fine without them. Other than that, I like this format. I think I'm going to make my regular game a T5,000 and use this setup rather than my usual T3,000. It makes for a deeper stack feel while still getting a game done in 3-4 hours. It also gives me a chance to get more of davey's plaques into the game!  | 
, I'll try to take some notes and report any interesting hands or situations that come up.
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