Turningstone Trip Report

Just got back from my Turningstone trip. I had planned on updating there but the wireless internet in the lodge section of the hotel was really poor and I still can't get my computer to work with an Ethernet cord.

The first tournament we played was a 1k buy-in event. This was one of the most miserable tournaments of my life. I was so card dead it was painful. Even with this problem, I tried raising some marginal hands in position and stuff, but my cbets got raised almost every time and I wasn't connecting with any flops. I don't think I've ever been more bored in my life than during this tournament. Live poker was a lot more noticeably boring this time around because I have been playing online more, and going from 100+ hands per hour to about 20 hands per hour is just insane. Anyways, I busted by shoving my short stack with AJ into AA.

The next day was an $1100 satellite to the 5k event on Friday. I played pretty well in this tournament and my table was loaded with about 5 kids under the age of 20 swapping screen names and 2+2 names, so it was a tough table. I managed to chip after a couple of hours and got my 10k stack up to about 20k. The blinds increased every 30 minutes and just when they were starting hurt, I went card dead and was blinded down to about 12k. I ended up shoving TT from the button and got called by AQ and lost that race. I finished something like 55th and 34 got a seat, so a semi-bubble.

Friday was the 5k main event. There were 124 players with a first place prize of 200k so it definitely peaked my interest. The tournament was loaded with internet kids and tight old people, so there weren't a lot of soft spots to easily get chips. I played really well the first day, especially when it came to disguising my hand. I got up to about 16k from 10k in about 1.5 hours but then went card dead and kept up a pattern of winning a decent pot to lose it back a couple of hands later. I finished the day at 16.5k which was about half the average, but the blinds were only going to be 300/600, so I would still have about 30 BB's. Jono was still alive as well (he was at my table) and had about 35k so he was in good shape. I started off day 2 nicely and won a few pots to get me around 18k but then I ended up squeezing with AK in the BB and got called by KK and failed to improve. I finished 33rd with top 13 paying so another semi-bubble. Jono busted about an hour after me so no success for the family. One thing I really hate is making a day two but then busting and not making the money. I am favor of making every tournament play down to the money on day 1 (except for things like the WSOP and WPTs) because it's very annoying...