I just won $500 in a freeroll tournament, despite an amazing bad run with “dominating” hands. In the first 20 minutes of the tournament I played 3 hands:<ul><li>AK (got beaten by a miracle strait– my opponent won with AJ)
</li><li>AQs (got beaten by a ten on the board– my opponent won with AT)
</li><li>AKs (My nut flush got beaten by an opponent’s full boat with A3s)</li></ul>Mind you, all of three of these hands were raised and re-raised before the flop with pot-sized bets. (This tourny doesn’t start with very many chips– you have to make moves early or fall victim to the rapidly escalating blinds.)
I’m amazed I survived that run. I was down to almost literally a chip and a chair, when everyone folded to my button. I made a pot-sized raise, and the big blind (also the big stack) re-raised me all-in. I had A9 suited– normally an easy fold… but I only had a couple chips left, and the pot was laying me 14:1 on my money. I called. I got lucky: he had a wired pair of fives, and I picked up an ace AND a nine on the flop.
From there, it was pretty basic. I had enough chips to play my game instead of being in the dreaded “all-in or fold” short-stack mode. I played for a few hours, and we got down to a couple people, agreed to split the prize pool between us. (We were about even in chips, and the blinds were roughly 1/3 of our stack… it would have been pretty much the luck of the draw at that point.)
Freeroll rush
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