Bluff Poker Tour Event #10 - Doyle's Room Poker Site

I was reading the Bluff Magazine website and I came across a section talking about the Bluff Poker Tour, I started reading and it is a series of online poker tournaments at different poker sites on the net. The buy-in for each tournament is $30 + $3, they are held weekly, so I got excited and spent the next 2 hours signing up at the 15 or so online poker venues where the tournaments are held. The best part is you accrue points for finishing in the money, and at the end of the tour the top 2 players get free buy-ins to 4 WPT events next season. Also the winner of each tournament wins a Bluff Poker Tour chip protector from nutzchips that is worth $1000.



So the tournament this week was at Doylesroom.com, I missed the first nine events so unfortunately I have a lot of work to do, but there are still over 20 events left to go, so there is still a chance. Anyway I was excited in the days leading up to today, I was looking forward to playing some meaningful poker to see how I would do.

The first mistake I made was I got home with a foot long sub at 8:35pm, and I needed to take a shower, so once all that was done I was in front of the computer eating the sub and I hadn't given a thought to poker the entire day. So I wasn't in the right frame of mind, and on top of that I had never played on doylesroom.com before so I wasn't familiar with the interface.

The tournament starts and there are 120 players in the tourney, early on I tried to make a few plays with bluffs and semi-bluffs to get a chip lead, but bad timing and no chance to setup the bluffs made it difficult, so I was down early. The table was fairly tight then I was dealt, 10 8 suited hearts in the big blind with the blinds $30/$60, it was raised to $120 (which shows no particular strength), and there were 2 callers of the raise, so I called as well. The flop came 10 8 10 SB checked I checked someone bet $240, I waited and called everyone else folded the turn 6 he went all in I called he shows J 8, and he is drawing dead against my boat. I go up to $3500 in chips, and looking to finally be in good shape.

The tournament goes on and I get whittled down to $2000 (the starting chip amount) and I am BB, everyone else folds the SB raises to $1200 I figure he is trying to steal my blinds, so I re-raise alin and he calls showing Q Q I have AK, I catch an A on the turn to take the hand, boy was that lucky. I felt I needed to make a stand with a decent hand, and with AK the only thing I was scared of was a pair which he had, but a lucky catch saved me this time.

I then managed to increase my chip stack through a few all-ins against shorter stacks, I was behind in a few of them and I managed to win the hand. I worked hard to focus this tournament and I was playing well, I did get lucky a few times, but I went in with quality cards. I had about $8000 chips which was healthy at the time, and I managed to steal the blinds a few times because it was getting close to bubble time. Then I put a bad beat on one of the Bluff Magazine Editors (bluffmag1) he raised me and I went over the top with K 8, he called and the flop came K 8 7 he pushed all in I called and he turned over JJ I crippled his stack and he ended up being the bubble man.

I worked hard and increased my stack to $28,000 which was 4th in chips with 10 people left, I was overjoyed I made my first "Final Table", it's something I have longed to accomplish and it finally happened. I decided to try and go for the win, I was dealt 5 5 the chip leader tekhead raised in 1st position to 4500 the blinds were $600/$1200, I re-raised him to $10,500 he called, I re-raised because he built his chip stack through playing crap hands and getting very lucky on All-In calls. The flop came Q, 7, 9 tekhead immediately pushes all-in, I had seen him make that move several times with nothing, I thought about it and I felt I was in the lead still, so I called. He turns over A 5, I was correct he was bluffing (just playing horribly), well the lucky bastard caught an A on the river, if I could have won that hand I would have been in the drivers seat to win the tourney. I finished in 10th place, but I did get 51 points in my first Bluff Poker Tour Event, and some cash. Here is a link to the tournament results:

http://www.bluffpokertour.com/scheduleresults.asp?schedID=10

My first experience with the BPT was a good one, I am hoping to climb up the points scale it will be hard to catch Quackpot (the current leader who I knocked out in this tourney), but I think my game is getting better even though I am getting a bit tired of getting knocked out late in tourneys holding a pocket pair and getting beat by people catching cards. Next weeks BPT event is at http://www.checknraisepoker.com this is a very small site with not a lot of traffic, the tourney will be small, so maybe I can win one of those nutz chips.