Twitter Poker Tour:Stars Event #6

Thursday Nights TPT was yet another success, as this time 34 players saw their way into the Pokerstars.com hosted $5+.50 buy in weekly tourney. I am pleased to see the regular turnout for these events as they’ve become something to really look forward to throughout the course of the week. Now if only my work and personal schedule could conform so that I was available to play in every one of them, that’d be beautiful.

My play last night was average at best. I showed up a few hands tardy because it was my oldest daughters birthday (kudos to Kelli, and a happy 10th B-day). She’s the first of my brood to reach double digits, and the fun is just beginning.

I walked into a monster on my second hand being dealt a suited AK, and I raised the low blinds 3 times with two callers. A flop of K-9-3 looked comfortable to lay out a bet of another 150, and I got one caller. The turn produced another harmless card, and I led out again for about the size of the pot, and my opponent moved all in, having me covered. I thought about it for a little bit, but elected to let it go because I thought that he might have a set. After I folded, he said he did, though he didn’t show. I was left with around 500 or so chips, and never was really able to do much after that.

I did take two decent pots, both on rather unfair beats to StreetDipper. The first was a coin flip where my pre-flop raise with KJos produced a K on the flop, and Street’s pocket 9’s were no good. But the second hand, Street just got unlucky as I was ahead with K-9 on a board of K-5-4. I laid out a small bet of 30, and only Street came along. The turn produced another 5, and I laid out another 30. Street raised it to 60, and I called. The river was another K, and I let him know that it was a bad river card. He checked to me, and I checked in return as he showed 7-5 for the lower boat. He’d been pretty crippled by then, and would later exit shortly before the break.

I took my short stack to the break, and actually made some headway back to around 1200 without doubling. But I met my demise in 16th place calling my pre-flop re-raise with K-Qos. I ran into AK and didn’t catch up. So far, that moves me into 24th place on the TLB, which I guess is pretty OK considering that I’ve only played in 4 of the 11 TPT events.

All in all, it was a well played tournament by virtually everyone. The final table action was really quite good. Jim Sr. (Net-Bogey) came in as one of the three good sized stacks, and for the most part controlled the final table’s action until heads up, where he had about a 3 to 1 chip lead over Rich Tucker (nstig8). But the tide swung in favor of Rich as he made a top pair and Jim a middle pair, and that doubled Rich to the surprising chip lead. From there, hands were traded back and forth with 400-800 blinds, and both stacks in excess of 20k. Finally, Jim moved all in for his last 23k with A-9, and Rich insta-called with J’s. The board ran out pairing Jim’s 9’s, but they weren’t enough to catch up and it was over with Rich hauling in the grand prize.

Many congrats are in order to everyone who’s played a TPT event thus far. It wouldn’t be the same without the participants. A couple of kudos to Atte-D2 (attitude) for maintaining the number 1 spot in the TPT Tournament Leader Board, and to Pokerplasm, for vaulting to 2nd place with his final table appearance last night (by actually playing this time too). You can see the TPT TLB here: http://twitterpokertour.com/leaderboard.

And for this tournament, congrats are in order to the money winners CrestedMom, FlushSeeker, The420Gov (who also won the bounty by taking out @72suited), and Net-Bogey, who for the second week in a row, became a prior TPT winner to run end their night with a runner up finish. That still leaves us without a two time winner.

And a special congratulations are in order to Rich Tucker for taking down his 1st TPT tourney win in his second attempt. Great tournament folks.

I can’t wait for the TPT:Tilt event next Thursday. Until then, Cheers P