Poker Tourney Cash $$$$

On Tuesday I drove down to Ballys to play poker.

It's about a 30-40 minute drive from our apartment and I had to mail some bills, so I swung by a post office on the way. Leaving the post office, I pulled behind a big white, fully pimped-out  Chevy pickup and wished I had brought my camera along because the guy's license plate read "IrnMike."

I knew Mike Tyson lived in Las Vegas and wondered if he could be piloting this sweet pickup. So I pulled up along side at the next red light and was foiled in my attempt to ID the driver because the windows were tinted solid black!

Oh well, I'll never know if I shared the road with the ex-champ, movie actor, accused rapist, face-tattooed lisper or not.

Anyway, I got to Ballys about 10:30 and there was no cash poker game going. I waited around til 11 and we finally got a 5-player game going. I was slowly bleeding away chips and not feeling that this would be a good day. By noon I was down $40 or so and by 1230 I decided to play in the noon tourney that pays $500 for 1st place, $200 for 2nd and $100 for third. It cost $60 to enter.

Key to making the decision was the fact that there were only 5 other players in the tourney!

All I had to do was outlast 3 people to cash.

So I joined the tourney late, but quickly won a couple of hands and was 3rd in chips in no time. I busted one guy  out of his chips, he re-bought into the tourney and I busted him out a second time, building my stack even higher. Being persistent, or stupid, he re-bought again. So, including his first buy-in he had $180 invested!

After about an hour of play, it was down to 3 of us. One guy had 90,000 in chips, I had 18,000 and the 3rd guy had 12, 000. The blinds were 4,000 and 2,000 when I got dealt A-5, both hearts.

The chip leader bet 2,000 and I called. The flop came A-5-8 with two diamonds. The chip leader bet 6000 and I went all in for my final 16,000. We showed our cards...my two pair and he had two diamonds. I had visions of doubling up my stack to roughly 35,000 and giving me a solid grip on 2nd place!

Sure enough, he hit a flush on the turn card and my only chance was to snag an Ace or Five on the river. No such luck and I finished 3rd, winning $100.

Looking back, maybe I should have just waited and hope the 3rd place guy got blinded out, but with the Ace 5,it seemed like the best thing to do.

Oh yeah, the guy who won the $500 was the guy I knocked out twice and he kept rebuying, investing $180 to take down the top prize.

Such is poker.

And so our adventure continues...