Last week a few of the guys were chatting about going to play in a Canadian Poker Tour tournament in Sarnia and I thought it'd be a good idea to get some more live play action in before heading to Vegas. The tourney was to start at Noon on Saturday at the Sarnia casino near the border. Two, Azim and I were going to drive there early Saturday morning at like 4-5am, check into the hotel and grab a shower before the tournament. The only problem with me was that I usually hit the sack around 6am and wake up at 2 in the afternoon, so leaving at 5am would mean I'd get zero sleep which is obviously not ideal for playing a poker tournament. I sucked it up, had a couple red bulls and black coffee and took to the tables at noon ready to play. The blinds started at 25/50 and we started with 5000 in chips. The first few hours I was running extremely hot and I was picking up chips pot after pot. In one hand this lady limped UTG (under the gun) and two other limper's followed.. I raise it up with pocket 10's from middle position. It gets back to the lady and she min raises my bet, this bet just screams out that she has AA or KK. This lady was the other chip leader at my table besides me so I know if I'm lucky enough to flop a set in this spot I will be to grab all her chips and add to my already chip lead. I end up getting a beautiful flop of 10,4,2 and I grab her whole stack against her aces. The rest of the day I just played solid poker not needing to gamble as much b/c I had so many chips. We got down to about 30 players left, me and Two were still in the tournament at this point. Oh yeah I should mention the format of this tournament before I continue. There was 3 qualifying days of this tourney that started on Thursday, the top 14 players of each day would make it to the finals on Sunday. So me and Two were left in the tournament, Azim got knocked out when his QQ lost to A,Q all-in preflop. Then Two ran into a bad beat when he pushed with AA and got called by QQ and the other donkey luckily hit a Queen on the turn ending Two's tournament life. The blinds starting getting extremely high when there was two tables remaining and it was a complete all-in fest with all the short stacks. At my table I was probably second in chip with the 15 players remaining when a loose player at my table decides to move all-in from middle position. I'm in the big blind and I glanced down at two red aces.. Christmas! The guy flips over K,3 off suit and I win the all-in making me one of the huge chip leaders of the tournament. So I sat on my chips till the day ended and went straight to my hotel room with the guys to get some well needed sleep. I passed out around 10 o'clock only to be awaken by one of the guy's snoring like a mad truck, it was insane, I don't think I've ever in my life heard a human being snore like that.. it was quite funny actually but I got a brutal sleep cuz of it.

We all woke up around 10am to go get some steak and eggs and I'd get ready to play in the finals. The final day consisted of 40 players and I was ranked approx. 3rd in chips. The blinds for the final day started at 400/800 and I had about 95,000 in chips.. so I had plenty of time to relax and still needed to avoid any gambling situations. We got down to about 25 player when this hand occurred; an absolute canon at my table moves all-in from the cut-off for about 50-60 thousand. I'm in the small blind and I pick up pocket kings and I instantly call. The donkey flips over J.9 of hearts making him a 80/20 dog to win the hand. Well his 20% chance of winning the hand came when he flops a straight and flush draw and turns his flush to absolutely cripple me. All that hard work down the drain on one bad beat. At this point now I've got barely any chips left and I play strong short stacked poker. I really excel with a short stack in tournament being able to pick good spots and take advantage of players just trying to make the final table. I managed to win a few blinds and got down to 10 players remaining when I lost an all-in with A,Q vs 7,7 vs K,10. I was eliminated 10th place and received $3,000 and rankings toward the Canadian Poker Tour. All and all I felt I played a very very good tournament, minimized mistakes, avoided gambling when I didn't need to and changed gears excellently. Who knows, if I don't get that bad beat with the Kings I possibly go on to win the tournament and win $50,000. Oh well, there's always next time!

Ship it