First things first - Many thanks to Sivanu Maulupe for starting this group.
We usually host a few series of "Friends & Family" mini-tourneys throughout the year. They are more social than competitive, with just $2 buy-ins. Although these games are loads of fun, most players are unskilled ... which doesn't help improve my personal game. Admittedly, I'm just an amateur wanna be.
We have numerous casinos and card rooms in the area and most of them hold regular tournaments to lure more players to their cash game tables (where the house really makes money). The problem is that most of these tourneys have buy-ins around $100. This may not sound bad, but whenl you consider playing two or three tourneys a week ... you could easily be down $1000 after a month of play. So in my search for an affordable Texas Holdem Tourney, I found Freddies Club in Fife, WA.
A little about the City of Fife ... it is small but well established and has enjoyed a residential real estate boom for a couple of years now. Currently the developer focus has shifted to industrial warehousing, but there are still several residential real estate projects in the works.
Freddies is conveniently located about 15 minutes away from my home, has good food and they hold a tourney every day at 11:30 AM with a $40 buy-in. I played there about once a week last winter and made the final table in about half the tourneys. This was a busy summer so I didn't play there hardly any at all. Back in late August I discovered that they moved their poker room out onto the casino floor, adding more poker tables and sacrificing some of the other gaming tables.
I played a Texas Holdem Tournament there last week and to my surprise they filled six tables with ten players each and still had alternates waiting for a seat. Much bigger than last year when most games were 30 - 40 players. Needless to say, a game with 60+ guys was sort of a shock after playing all summer with the fellas, their wives and kids. This was the largest game I've played in ever.
I paid my $40 buy-in, drew seat #7 at table #4 and was given 3100 in chips. Blinds started at 25/50 and when cards hit the tables so did the sad revelation that I had drawn seats with four Gus Hanson wanna bees. Three spread out to my right (which wasn't so bad) and one in the next seat to my left (which stunk). All four of these guys played loose and very agressive ... but after about an hour when the table broke up, two had busted out, one was crippled with almost no chips and the last had a large stack.
There was still time left at the 100/200 blind level when I filled a seat at the next table. Just the opposite from the first table, these guys were all very tight and conservative. My first hand was pocket Kings and I raised to 450 preflop from early position. This seemed a smaller raise than cowboys deserved but everybody still folded (why couldn't I have drawn this table first).
About half my chips were blinded away before joining these gentlemen and when blinds were at 400/800 I had built it back up to 2600. We also had a couple of new players, one with a healthy stack of chips. This is where playing cards with women and kids cost me big. I was dealt AQ suited in mid position, hesitated and limped in instead of raising. The cutoff player calls and the big blind (w/big stack) pushes all-in. I put them both on low pocket pairs at best, so I called. Cutoff player had fives, Big Blind had sevens ... I wasn't too worried. I caught another Queen on the flop but then the Big Blind caught his third seven on the turn and I was done.
If this is a Bad Beat story, then I beat myself by playing unskilled poker too much without improving my personal game with players closer to or better than my best level of play. We're starting another series of home games soon and I will be certain to play at least one tourney a week at Freddies.
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