Denver Poker Tour: Oriental Theater 5/30

The Place
This week we played in the Oriental Theatre itself. The new owner replaced
the theater seating with box seats. Three of these box seats had a poker tables set up in it. The Oriental Theatre hosted three tables and the waiting list had about ten folks on it. I called before hand on the day of the tournament to put my name on the list. The game started at 7PM. As usual two smoking table and a tight non-smoking table.


My Play
I played for about three and a half hours and got out of there at about 10:30. I made it to the final table and was out at about 8th place. I played well during the first levels, but I didn't get any cards. The best hand I had was a pair of Ten's.

This hand got me thinking. I was in mid position and I raised three times the BB. The person on the button raised and the BB went all in. I call and the button called. The flop came JTx, I checked and the button went all in. The turn came X and the river came a K. The button turned over KK's and I lost. He was about a 10% chance to pick up one of those two kings. I was thinking about the hand, perhaps if I went all in on the flop, I could have forced the button (with KK's to fold), it's unlikely, but a show of strength could have forced him out.

The mistake I really made was that I waited until my stack became really short before attempting to make a move. By the time I went all in with 89o, my bet was really weak versus the blinds. I could have pick up a few blinds by raising a few times pre-flop.