Sat down this evening to watch the penultimate games of La Liga (was especially impressed with Messi's Maradona goal) and thought I'd take a break from the cash games I've been playing to play a few tournaments. So I loaded up Sun, Noble and Party to see what they have on offer and decide on a $5 Headhunter tourney on Sun, the $4k guarenteed on Noble and a $6 tourney with 900 runners on Party.

I'll start with the Party tourney and now remember why me and the site do not get in as generally it was tourneys rather than cash that i used to play. 6th hand in and I get dealt QQ UTG+1:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1159974

My theory for pushing the turn is that I dont want one of the many scare cards to come as I figure the lack of reraise on the flop meant I was in pretty good shape against a guy who had minraised twice in previous hands with the nuts and third nuts. So I didnt expected him to be drawing at this stage and the blank on the turn meant that he didnt have the odds to call. Obviously he did call, without even a heart, and hit one of his 8 outs and that was me done. I'm going to try to restrict my Party play to cash from now on.

In the Noble tourney I lost half my stack when all-in with QQ versus a very short stack who had AA and a medium stack who had KJ. Obviously the K hits and I start to play the short stack. Then at 50/100 I pick up KQ on the button and after 3 limpers I put the squeeze on pushing for my last 970 chips and get 2 callers who both have 55. The flop comes KKQ and I'm back to average stack. I then manage to get it all-in against 2 callers again when I have JJ and the pot has been min raised and called preflop so I push and they both call with KQ and AQ. Q hits the flop and as I have them covered i'm down to 6BB's and looking to shove at any opportunity. I pick up AQ and get it all-in vs A7 to double up before pushing UTG for 9BBs with A9sooted and got called by the big blind who had 73off...hmmm...of course he spiked a 3. (Sorry for the lack of hand histories but I havent figured out how to get them for Noble yet.)

The Headhunter tournament is a new form of tournament that I enjoy playing in. Basically 50% of the prize pool is distributed as normal to the top finishers, but the other 50% goes in the form of bounties, so everyone has $2.50 on their head in a $5 tourney and when you knock someone out you collect 75% of their head and the other 25% gets added to your head. The first hour of the tournament was a tale of AQ, which featured in the 3 major hands that I played, amazingly all-in pre everytime:

Firstly trying to knock out the short stack that pushed to pick up his bounty:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1160071

Then it was me who picked up AQ the very next hand against the same player, who had AJ:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1160085

Obviously when the Jack hit the flop I wasnt too happy...
I then picked AQ up again and for the 3rd time it won again, this time knocking out two players to scoop me $3.60:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1160095

Just after the break I then managed to knock another player out with 77 against his AT, again all-in pre and I had managed to get up to 6k from 1.5k without playing a flop. I then pushed a flush draw in a bad spot against 2 pair but got lucky to double up again. I then picked up alot of small pots when there was 1675 in the pot pre at 300/600 blinds with the antes to get up to 19k and by then cash started with 40 left with me in 15th chip position. I had already picked up about my buyin in bounties and so this was all profit from here on.

I then got moved to a new, very aggressive table that seemed to have an all-in every hand and a couple of levels later I had bled chips and was down to 9BB as we started the 600/1200/100 level with 20 players left. I managed to pick off a short stack with my 77 to get another bounty worth $3.50 and another soon after to add $3.66 to my collection and push me up to 40K in chips and 7th out of the 12 remaining players at the 1200/2400/300 level and when I reached the final table I was still 7th in chips with 20BB's. I then picked off the first short stack at the final table when his Jack Ten shove ran into my ace king for another $3.60 meaning I had already picked up about $15 worth of bounties. I then doubled up when my UTG shove for 10BBs was called by KJ but my 44 held and I knocked him out a few hands later when he yet again liked his KJ too much and reraised me when I had AK, I collected $7 for that knockout. Then this key hand happened:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1160376

This happened after I had built my way to the chip lead mainly by picking up a lot of small pots and raising the guy who eventually played that hand with me when he limped or raised, hence I think he was annoyed and played the hand like he did. Playing 5 handed after that I pretty much raised every hand with my chip lead until the second chip leader played back with AJ when I happened to have AK and it held to give me about 400k of the 575k chips in play. When we got 3 handed I double up one of the short stacks twice in a row when my 77 ran into his 88 then my 22 into his QQ and at the 3rd break I had 280k with the other two having 160k and 135k with blinds at 4000/8000/1000 so still plenty of play.

At this stage I looked at how much the other two's bounties were worth and one was the same as mine at $15 having knocked out 9 people each, but the other was worth just $4 and had only knocked out 2 people. So he had come through a field of 387 players to get 3 way having knocked out that few players which I found pretty amazing. I then lost a huge 50/50 when my AJ failed to improve against the $4 bounties pocket 4's. And then lost another 50/50 against the same player when his AK outdrew my 99:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1160423

So I finished 3rd for just $124 made up of $37 worth of bounties and $87 in prize money and am still looking for that first big win in a Sun Poker tournament. First prize in the tourney would have been worth about $300 to me and in the chip position I had when we were 4-way I would have expected to pick that up...but not to be today...