WSOP 2006 Las Vegas, NV

Jack and I both busted out early in the first big tournament we entered - the $1500 Three day No Limit Hold'em WSOP Event #37. Jack was out in about half an hour losing with aces full of eights to quad eights. I lasted about an hour and a half.

Starting with only 1500 chips, I was down to about 1,000 after an hour and a half of nothing much to play and there had been 4 people eliminated on my table, so a couple of the players had much larger chip stacks than mine. I thought I needed to get some chips to have a chance of beginning to build a stack before the blinds increased to 50/100 thus giving me an "M" of 6 . There were 4 limpers when I had the button, so I raised with AJ and got three callers. When Q-10-x rainbow fell on the flop and it was checked around to me, I made a large bet of half my remaining chips trying to end it there but got a caller. The turn was a four and since I had put a lot of my chips in the pot already, I decided to go all-in to try to get the guy to fold. I had an overcard -the Ace- to the board and a gut-shot straight draw, so I figured if he had a pair, I would still have a chance to make the winning hand. True, but it was a slim chance, and he had the KQ for a pair of queens. I did not get a king for the straight or an ace for the pair of aces on the river either of which would have given me the winning hand. In retrospect, it was a weak play and I didn't get the suck-out when I needed it. I should have been more patient and waited for a better hand to push with, but after an hour and a half of mostly fold, fold, fold, the AJ looked pretty good to me. Since I had only played about 4 hands in the hour and a half, I had a very tight table image and had elicited folds from everyone in the few hands I had played by making small raises. I thought I could get away with it again, but got looked up at the wrong time.