Last night we mixed it up a bit. We had 6 players, so we decided instead of a few hours of limit-raise and then an hour or so of no-limit to run a tournament. Everyone bought in for $20, and got $2k in chips. The idea, much like the "WSOP":http://www.harrahs.com/wsop/, is that as each player is eliminated, you get a placement. We did it so that the top 3 places were "in the money", and got 50%, 30% and 20% for first, second and third. We had a quickly escalating blind structure, with levels changing every 20 minutes. We also let people do a rebuy at the end of the first hour to bring them back up to $2k, if they wanted. Mike and Aaron both had rough nights; never really getting good enough hands to play, and eventually got blinded down to the felt. David gets the "most improved student" gold star... he's been doing his homework and played really well... using his stack to his advantage, and making smart plays. His best hand was a showdown against "Jason(Jason and Sabre enjoying a quiet afternoon)":http://feralboy.com/photoalbum/photos/20040419_coopers/P1010010.jpg where he went all-in with the K-high nut flush (A was already on the board), and Jason had the Q-high. Jason was the wild man; betting heavy, and not afraid to call someone's all-in, which proved to be a good enough strategy when paired with decent cards to put him 2nd in the money. Joshua was a little off-balance the whole night... loosing the first hand to me with cards he shouldn't have stayed in with, and then not getting a lot of good cards throughout the night.

I was fairly unstoppable. The very first hand of the night, I wound up going heads-up with 2 pair, and took in a nice sized pot from that. I sort of meandered after that, without enough of a stack to really do damage. Towards the end of the first hour, I won a massive pot off of "David":http://bigbrit.blogspot.com/ when my pocket 9s made a full boat with 7-7-X-X-9, and the miracle river beating his 2 pair. Some other lucky hands were me rivering a set of 2s with A-2, and knocking Joshua out the first hand after the rebuy period when my A-A yielded a set of aces on the turn, and his flush draw never materialized after I put him all in.

The last hand was pretty innocuous; I was big blind, and Jason just limped in from the small blind. I had something crappy like 2-6s (hearts), and the flop came X-K-2, with one heart. J made a small raise, and I called just to see if I'd get 2 pair or the lucky and improbable set of 2s. Next card was a heart. I don't think it even registered, as it was a low card, and didn't match either of my cards, and we both checked. Last card came as another heart, and I had made a flush with two running hearts. I checked my hole cards to make sure I really had it, and then looked one more time to be sure. I put J all-in, and he called with a pair of Ks. I wasn't even really sure I had the flush until I flipped my cards over, and sure enough, there were 5 hearts out there. 50% of $170 meant a very, very good night for me.

I wonder if I'll be able to repeat that performance. I was very lucky early on to not get short stacked, and as I picked up a few decent pots with good hands, I was able to start muscling the smaller stacks around, and bought quite a few pots with low pair or nothing at all, but people were unwilling to call after I had already made and shown such good hands before.