BlogDoofus

The PPA Petition freeroll at Full Tilt Poker started seating with a total of 23,375 players starting. The action has not been nearly as fast as other large tournaments I've been in. I've been able to double up once and beat two players that were all in against me. At 1:55 (local time) the game went on the 1st break with 20,854 players left, I'm in 630th place with 5450 chips and hoping to build my stack and advance position higher up.

1st break stats:

Statistics for 30 Hands

Street	Saw	Saw/Total
Flop	6	20%
Turn	6	20%
River	5	17%
Showdown	4	13%
Street	Won	Won/Saw	Won/Total
Pre-flop	0	0%	0%
Flop	0	0%	0%
Turn	1	17%	3%
River	1	20%	3%
Showdown	2	50%	7%

About 15 minutes before the second break I had one of those heartbreaker hands. I had pocket Queens and some misc trash on the flop. However the turn and the river were both Aces. Naturally I bet into that fairly heavily, figuring that I'd make it too expensive for anybody to risk and win the pot. Except one person didn't fold and I ended up being blindsided by and Ace-high diamond flush. When it was all said and done my bad judgment had cost me half my stack. Note to self, when you think you've got the best hand, think again, somewhere there's a bigger one waiting to stomp you flat. When somebody keeps re-raising, you gotta ask yourself WHY.

At 2;55 local the second break got started. At that point I had 6320 chips which put me in 2,689th place out of 11,733 players still in the game.

The pace of dropouts had increased by this point, probably some people getting impatient (just a guess) plus a lot of short stacks getting eaten up by the blinds. I continued to try to play the tightest game I know, folding most hands, making small gains here and there. This far it was more than enough to keep up with the blinds. The game at this point is at level 8 with blinds 60 and 120, when it gets to level 11 the blinds will be 120 and 240 with a 25 ante, which will probably speed up the dropout rate.

2nd break stats:

Statistics for 198 Hands

Street	Saw	Saw/Total
Flop	41	21%
Turn	21	11%
River	13	7%
Showdown	8	4%
Street	Won	Won/Saw	Won/Total
Pre-flop	8	4%	4%
Flop	14	34%	7%
Turn	6	29%	3%
River	4	31%	2%
Showdown	4	50%	2%

At 3:31 local I went all in on a solid two pair. Unfortunately the other guy had an even more solid full house that I couldn't have seen coming (but maybe should have). This put me out in 4,161st place which means I won a whopping $0.14 as my share of the $3,500 prize pool.

I'm not complaining though. This is the first time I've actually cashed in a tournament that had real money prizes.

My end of game stats:

Statistics for 231 Hands

Street	Saw	Saw/Total
Flop	45	19%
Turn	24	10%
River	16	7%
Showdown	11	5%
Street	Won	Won/Saw	Won/Total
Pre-flop	10	4%	4%
Flop	14	31%	6%
Turn	6	25%	3%
River	4	25%	2%
Showdown	5	45%	2%

Next up on the agenda is "The Record Breaker" tomorrow afternoon. It's up to 39,037 people registered as I write this post and more buying in ( or winning their way in through satellite tournaments) every few seconds. It's entirely possible that all 50,000 seats will be taken by the time the game starts.

See you at the final table! (optimistic, ain't I?)

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