P-Stars play

Thanks for some recs. That was appreciated. I did check out Bodog and will probably throw some money in there to play there tournaments. I did check out the site and it may have what I am looking for in the tourney area. And if the games are soft, all the better!

I also played the $10 tourney on Poker Stars last night. I don't know what the words were to describe it. Interesting. Amazing. Surprising.

First off, 1273 people signed up for it. Wow! I am not used to seeing that unless it is a buck entry or a freeroll. First place was over $1200. Sweet. To make the money, you needed to come in at least 135 and would get $30. Not bad. The level of play? Pretty bad at times.
From my experiences in freerolls, I wasn't too concerned about not making the money. I can play tight and wait for hands. As long as I don't suffer from a bad beat, I am ok.

My table was pretty decent. There were some loose players that wanted to see flops. You could raise the blind up from 10 to 150 and you were going to get 4 callers. Not truly what I wanted to have but if they didn't catch any piece of the flop, they were gone. I dumped some chips on exactly that. With A K suited I jacked it up to 150 and 4 of us saw a flop that came all rags, and all hearts. I checked it and some guy moved all in with A K hearts. No big deal there. I would chips up with 10 10 when I hit a set on the flop. I bet out half the pot, knowing I would get called. Sure enough, someone moved all in and I called. He showed his open ended straight draw. That became meaniningless when a 5 paired the board giving me a safe boat.

I played A K aggressively next bluffing my way on a 10 high flop. It took the second bullet but I took it down. From there, I hardly played a hand for the next 20 minutes. Didn't catch much. I was a bit amazed that people were dropping like flies. 30 minutes in and half the field was gone. I don't know why but I assumed that was just a low limit tourney or a freeroll experience where people move on anything. Guess not.

I got booted around 600. Got dealt K K in the small blind. I moved it up to 350, knowing the BB would not fold. I have seen him call everytime he had money in, so I am going to get all I can out of this. Flop comes 9 high. I bet the pot and he calls. Not a surprise. Turn is a J. I push basically because it is a pot size bet and I think I should be good here. He insta calls and shows J 9 off. See ya. I don't think I could have done anything else here except push on the flop or pre-flop. Even then it wouldn't have mattered. He wasn't going to fold.

Funny how this game can smack you around. I feel I played pretty good, though maybe a tad tighter than I should. The thought of making some money in that tournament is very appealing. I know I will enter it again. Right now though, I will deposit some into Bodog and check that out.

I don't know if I will play tonight. I got 2 books to read. On the advice of many better bloggers, I got Dan Harrington's book on tournament poker and Sklanky's Theory of Poker. Must reads that I need to get some time to, well, read. That is kind of tough though. Whenever I start reading, I end up wanting to play. If worse comes to worse, I will read on the plane to Vegas in June.