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My tournament finishes are getting better and better every day. Today I managed to get my first Top 100 finish. 94th to be exact.

Although I didn’t receive the cards everyone wanted to have (good ones), I made good decisions when to play and when to fold.
In total I’ve played 109 hands and won 9 of them. Not much, but considering I always played with one of the smallest stacks on the table I feel I played pretty good.

In the first 30 minutes of the tournament, I didn’t win a single hand. In fact when I received pocket 9’s I raised to 200 to be re-raised to 540. I had to call. Flop gave me 7 9 Q and suddenly I had trips.
I raised again, 1 player called. The turn gave a 2 and again I raised a little to see what my opponent is doing. He just called. With the 4 on the river, I was pretty sure I had him, but I’ve checked to see what he would do. He paused a bit and then raised. At that time I’m thinking, could he have trip Queens? Because I was sure I still had some money left (not much) even if I should lose the call and because I had to call with my trips I called to see that my feeling was right, he had pocket Queens.
Well played by him. With 280 left I had to start all over again.

The first hand I’ve won than I’ve doubled up. Immediately afterwards, I’ve drawn a straight on the flop, but with only 1 player left against me. So I checked to bet a small amount on the turn and seeing my opponent folding.  Bad luck on this one

Then suddenly medium good cards came my way on the Big and the Small blind and I started winning these. And within a few hands I was on a higher stack than ever before today.
Now it’s time to be patience and let other players making mistakes one by one. The field thinned out hand by hand and I also passed my best finish so far, 472nd.

Because of the bad hands I was receiving I had to fold hand after hand, even the big and small blinds, but that was the only money I was losing. Just before the break I moved to another table to play against one of the largest stacks.
He definitely took advantage of this, every time he raised the big blind. And if you only have 2000 or so to play with, 320 is a big amount to play medium cards. Everyone folded and folded and ...
After the break I again took a hit by losing a straight to a flush. This left me 360 to play with, with big blind 100/200. I figured out I had 5 chances to take action before it was over. It was just on the last chance, when I had the big blind that I received J and 6 of Diamonds. All or nothing now.
The flop paired my jack, but also showed a king. Only 4 players left, all started checking, so nobody had a King in his hands. I managed to multiply my stack 4 times and was save for another round before the big blind came again.
But the tactic changed now to all in if I had good cards.

Before I knew it the blinds where there again. Still hadn’t cards to play with. Then my last hand (you can guess the outcome of this ) I had suited 10 and K. I went All-in to get called by suited 7 8.
Flop took away my chance of winning almost completely, 4 8 8 on the table. I needed runner-runner badly! But the turn made me finish on the 94th place today.
To round up, I didn’t received the best cards on the table, but I made good calls and finished very good even because of the minor setbacks during the tournament.
I had great fun today and almost ended up in the real money!

Anyone of you playing in tournaments like these? What places are you finishing?

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