Yesterday I, together with 99 other people qualified ourselves for a $5000 giveaway tournament.
With 3000 people in the tournament yesterday, I managed to climb up the board pretty fast to a top 500 place.
Then I was moved to another table where only me and another guy where playing, the rest was on auto-fold. I truly hate this. That’s no fun at all. Me and the other guy made an arrangement that we let the big blinds pas along as fast as we could and each taking halve off the table’s money. In 10 minutes we took 5 players out of the tournament. With the remaining 2 only having a few chips left.

At this time other players joined the table and we could start playing again. With a few bad streaks I suddenly lost my grip on the top 500 and in need of some wins bad.

Then it was my time, with drawing 2 full houses’ in a row, I doubled-up 2 times. Back in the running, with a sight on the top 100.

After 1 hour, only 500 people where left. With the first 100 earning a ticket to the final, I had a pretty good shot now. I only played the hands that I felt like playing, like AK, AQ, KK, QQ and JJ when I’m in early position. AA I got on the big blind directly after the break, made a small raise and everybody folded, damn. In late position I played AJ, KJ, TT also together with suited cards if one of them was an A or a K.
This tactic brought me to the 75th place of the leaderbord. With more and more people getting eliminated, I was pretty sure I could make the cut.
The downside of this was that I had to fold lots of hands. With the big blinds getting higher, I sometimes took the gamble to make a raise as everybody started folding to make sure they’ll end up with the last 100. I even made a win with 7 2 on the small blind. Everyone folded, I went all in and the big blind folded. Off course I showed my seven deuce to let them now I like to bluff sometimes.

This action actually put more chips into my account 3 hands later when I got AA for the 2nd time. Being the first to enter the pot, I made a small bet. The players after me folded and the small blind re-raised me. The big blind limped in and I went all in once again, knowing I had a strong hand and the 2 other players had a greater stack than me.  It could cost me the ticket to the $5K tournament.

As the small blind folded, the big blind called me, telling me afterwards that he thought I was bluffing again. He showed a 9 10 suited, but with a rainbow flop a flush was far away. Turn and river where also good for me and I doubled up once again.
The highest position I got was around the 50th place. With a bad beat on the river with a higher Full House, I was down to place 80 with only 105 people left.

Now I started folding and checking also, I even didn’t have the time to make a bet as there was always a big stack taking advantage of this situation with a very big raise. I can’t blame them, I would have done the same.

10 minutes after this, the satellite was over, I won my 2nd tournament and a ticket to the $5K tournament the next day.