Played in the 5th of a series of 7 tournaments in a home game series I am involved in. The Top 20 of each tournament gets points, and the Top 20 overall after 7 tournaments get to play in the Tournament of Champions, which a portion of the buy-in from each of the previous 7 tournaments is earmarked for. Having missed two tournaments, and getting a 10th and a 39th, I only had 11 points after 4 tournaments, leaving me way back in 30th place. As the touranment started, I definately was at a fun but tough table. We all had a good time, and I managed to get pocket pairs several times in the first hour, adding a little to my chip stack. The person directly to my left was just hitting everything. He would go with trash one hand, and outflop someone, and then have pocket Aces the next, and win any race. After a couple of hours and the blinds up to 500/1000, I was down to 2,500 chips. In the big blind, I had 34o, but UTG went all in for 1,500. I only had 1,500 left in my hand after the blind, but to call was only 500, the same as I would have had to put in for my small blind. The flop came out a beautiful 44x, and a 3 on the river made me a full house. I managed to win a few more chips on the following hand, when I pushed with air on the river on an all high board that was checked around the entire way. Playing tight, everythign thought I had caught the river card for two pair. This pushed my up over 5,000 chips. The huge stack to my left pushed all in a few hands later with QQ, the woman I bluffed (and then tilted her by telling but not showing what I had when I pushed with air earlier) pushed all in with her 6,200. And I look down and see pocket Aces, so I snap called. An Ace on the flop and I was tripled up to 15,000. I managed to pushed my stack to over 29,000 by the time the final table was finally gotten to. I eliminated two more people, and by the time we got down to 4, I had 50,000 in chips, but the blinds were an amazing high 8,000/16,000. With only 216,000 chips in play, it was all a push fest at that point. The still huge stack pushed all in UTG (I was the big blind), he got one caller with exactly the same amount of chips as me, and I called with A7 of spades. The big stack has A2o, and the other caller had AKo. The flop came down 3s6x8s, the turn was a 9x, leaving me both a open-ended straight draw and a flush draw, but neither hit so the AK was good and I was out in 4th. At those blinds though, the whole thing was a crap shoot by the end. Was very happy with my finish though.
