A few more points

I finally got to play another 45 SNG last night and I came in 4th. I picked up 5 points in the Challenge, which I needed desperately. There are a lot of points going up on the board in the challenge and I need to keep pace.

The tourney was a real roller coaster ride for me as I played a little bit looser than normal once I got a few chips. I ended up losing one big hand about midway through when I had a chance to bust 2 with an OESD on the flop but it didn't come for me and I lost about half or more of my stack.

The biggest gaffe came with only 4 of us left. There was one person sitting out and he was to my left, so I had the benefit of grabbing some free blinds often. With the blinds at 600/1200, it was huge when I could take those blinds uncontested of course. I had the feeling that the guy to my right was getting sick of it as he would raise about every 5 or 6 hands when the blind would be taken by me.

After a couple of times giving it up, I had Q4o in the SB and he raised it to 3000. I thought for a second and bumped it to 7000. He thought and then pushed, which should have gotten me to fold. Especially after reading Eric's post yesterday, I should have given it up, but I had priced myself into calling his last 4000 by mistake. I called, which left me with about 4000. He had pocket 5s. The flop came 345, turn was a 4, and the river was a 3 giving him the bigger boat, as it should have been.

That was my downfall hand as I didn't make it past the sitting out person to take 3rd place. He had a really big stack when he sat out and we had been chipping away at him, but my mistake cost me before we could get him out.

I am looking up a steep list of players in the challenge right now but there is still a lot of poker to be played so we'll see how it goes.

I signed my life away for the truck last night and I pick it up today. I was actually hoping that I could put it off until after the weekend because we are going up to New Hampshire for the weekend. A quick 3 night summer vacation to Storyland. I will probably play a little golf with my older 2 kids and we will get closer to nature in the rivers and streams up there. We decided last night that we would leave tomorrow night rather than Friday morning so we could have a couple full days up there. I am really looking forward to it. It would have been nice to rack up the 500 or 600 miles on my trade in rather than on our leased minivan, but not a big deal really.

I hope to make the DADI tourney tonight, that is if I get home in time. If not, good luck to all and I will be in a 45 SNG at some point I am sure as I get ready to say goodbye to the internet for a few days.

Oh, also, I won't be able to update the challenge leaderboard until Sunday night, after I do it tomorrow morning...