So, I know it's been a while, and you are still wondering how I ended up doing in the Bahamas, right? Apologies to my readers for not posting PCA Day 3 earlier, but better late than never I suppose...
Honestly I'm not going to be able to remember many of the hands in great detail, but I can give you an idea. I started the day with a healthy 215,000 with blinds at 1,500/3,000/400. I started the day by raising the cutoff with 6,6 and taking down the blinds. This was probably the highlight of my day.
Folded to me in the cutoff and I raised 9,9. It folded to the big blind, an older gentleman whom I knew very little about. He called and the flop was A,8,4. He checked, I bet around half the pot, and folded to his 3x check/raise.
A few orbits later I again raised the cutoff to 10,000. This time with 76s. It folded to the big blind, who re-raised to 25,000, leaving himself with approximately 110,000 behind. I think all three options (call/fold/raise) are viable options, but I decided to let this one go.
Shortly after I raised J,J from the two hole and Jeff Madsen flat called from middle position. Everyone else folded. The flop was Ah,9h,8. Check, fold.
A few rounds later it folded to me in the cutoff. This time I looked at 6,6 again and popped it to 10,000. Again it folded around to the big blind, who in turn made it 30,000. Unbelievable!! I had to let it go and move on. I really thought he was likely to have two overcards in this spot, but I wasn't about to play a guessing game at this point in the tournament.
At this point we went on a well timed break. I regathered my composure and decided to lay low for a while.
Blinds: 2k/4k/500
A few hands into the level middle position raised to 12k. Folded to the small blind, who re-raised to 30k. I'm in the big blind and looked down at two red queens. At this point there were 228 left, with 224 getting paid (with a flat payout structure). I had 150,000. The small blind had about the same and the initial raiser had us both covered. I wasn't really worried about the initial raiser, as he had been fairly active thus far. However, I really thought the small blind had been playing extremely tight. Not only that, but it really looked like he wanted to make the money very badly. I thought about what to do for a while - I really thought about folding because I really felt like the small blind had a premium hand. I also thought about smooth calling, but ultimately I decided that I didn't like that option because I thought that if I shipped it that he would probably fold AK preflop, so why give him a free look at the flop? After much thought I decided to just ship it. The initial raiser insta-folded, followed by an insta-call from the small blind (with aces, of course). No suckout, gg fishy :(
In retrospect I think that I could have gotten away from the hand. I know it's easy to say that once you see the hand, but I just regret not going with my gut. I've talked with a few friends about the hand. They all seem to think that it was a standard bustout hand, so I can't get too down on myself, I suppose..
Bubbling is never fun, but I've been going deep in a lot of tournaments lately and I know things are going to start clicking soon.
