I made such a bad play
I am at the Borgata to play their $1,500+150 deep stack tournament. This 3 day event features the best structure in the eastern United States. Blinds for day 1 are 50 min. Day 2 is 60 with the final day featuring 75 min levels.
Borgata’s guarantee of a minimum prize pool of $500k brought out 607 runners. Nearly doubling their guaranteed prize pool. First place will bring a commanding $252K!!!
I had a good table draw with a nice mix of players. We had them all: donkey, rock, flush chaser, over defenders, under defenders, chauvinist, weak, tough, bad and good players. There was lots of action preflop with a high percentage of hands going all the way to the river. These guys were relentless. I was feeling very good about my steadily growing chip stack. I was above average as we entered the sixth level (200/400 with 50 antes).
I had not played many hands all tournament long. My hand selection was tight. I was only playing top 10% of hands. The tournament cannot be won on day one, so I was taking it easy, not risking much.
Then comes THE hand that ended my tournament. I was dealt pocket jacks. Since there were a couple of limpers, I raised to 5x the big blind. I got one caller and the two of us went to the flop. The flop came with one over card, a queen. For some reason I failed to base my continued actions in this hand upon the type of player my villain was…by the time we got to the river I pushed the remainder of my stack into the middle. The villain tanks and asks how much…it is almost ten thousand more…villain tanks for a while and finally shrugs his shoulders and says, “What the heck” and calls. Level one players cannot be moved of a pair. My fault plain and simple. I needed to remember who I was playing.