Event #7 ($215 limit hold'em) Recap

Event #7 started with 1872 players, a first prize of $70,012, a 9th place prize of $4,493 and a 270th place prize of $374. It's interesting to note that if this was a NL tournament there would have been at least 5,000 entrants. Limit hold'em is just not that popular.

The tournament started off with a little excitement. One minute before start time I went down stairs to reload my coffee cup and when I came back I saw that it was my turn, I was in the big blind and I had KK! The limits were 20/40 and one player had called the 20 chip big blind. I raised to 40 and he reraised to 60 and I reraised to 80. The flop came down A 5 6 with 2 diamonds. I hated to see the ace, but the pot was already pretty big so I decided to check and call when he bet. He did in fact bet, I called and the turn was the 2 of diamonds. I had the K of diamonds and I thought there was maybe a 10% chance I could get him to fold if I bet. I bet 40 and he raised me to 80. I called and the river was a blank. At this point I checked and he bet 40. The pot was so big I had to call just in case he was a nut bag who was just getting creative on the first hand. He wasn't. When the cards got turned over he showed me AK and won the pot. If this had been a NL tournament, all the money could have gone in before the flop and I'd have gone broke on the first hand. Instead I still had 2280 of my original 2500 chips. One of the nice things about limit is you can't get killed early by one hand.

For those of you not familiar with limit hold'em you should notice that all of the bets and raises before and on the flop are in increments of 20 and all the bets and raises on the turn and river are in increments of 40. This is how limit hold 'em works. No matter how good your hand is you can only bet and raise in set amounts.

As predicted this was the most boring tournament that you could imagine. So boring that I'm only going to share the details of one hand. With the limits at 100/200 I raised to 200 from the button with AK with the K of clubs. I got called by the big blind and the flop came down 4 6 7 with 2 clubs. He checked I bet 100 thinking that I might get him to fold and I might have the best hand. He raised me to 200 and I called hoping to hit and A or a K on the river. The turn was the 9 of clubs and he checked. I made a semi bluff figuring a A, a K or a club would make me the best hand and there was a chance I could get him to fold. But, he raised me again. Whoops. Happily the river was the 3 or clubs. He check and called and showed me 3 5. He'd flopped a straight and it took a miracle runner runner flush for me to win the pot. He squawked on and on about his bad luck, but it was his own fault since he should have folded before the flop.

That was about the only good thing that happened to me in the whole tournament. I played a few hands, won a few pots, but never got above 3,000 chips. About 3 hours into the tournament with the limits at 200/400 I lost my last 1000 or so chips with A5 against QJ. I finished 793 out of 1872 and definitely went out with a fizzle instead of a bang.