So today was the big Alpha8 tournament at Club WPT that I won entry into earlier this week. The tournament prize pool was 13.9 million play chips, with a 100,000 chip buy-in. Since I won the satellite tourney, my entry was free. I’d been looking forward to this afternoon all week. Finally, I had a chance to see how I’d do against some pretty serious players. At least as serious as play chip players could be, methinks.

I started the day off playing in some cash games and making 100k in play chips at the 100/200 tables before registering for a freeroll tournament to practice and get ready for the big one. The freeroll had 162 entries and I played very well, making the final table and battling all the way to heads-up for the win. My opponent and I were fairly evenly stacked in chips and the battle raged for about 30 minutes, each of us trying to one-up the other. We got it all in several times, each time with the other proving the victor, so the lead changed back and forth at least four times before we came to the final hand. Unfortunately, he had the better hand and I finished in second place. Not a bad warm up.

Four p.m. rolled around and I sat down to play the Alpha8. I managed to win a few early hands, which put me in a chip positive position to play for a while. I opened up my game a bit while the blinds were low, but still played pretty tight, waiting for good cards and making the most of them when I had it. There was one time when I had KJ (King Jack) vs. AJ (Ace Jack) and a jack hit on the flop. After some furious raising, I had him all-in and I was almost all-in. The turn brought a blank, but I got lucky on the river and spiked a jack for two pair and victory in the hand.

I was making good decisions, capitalizing on my opportunities, and using my tight image to pull off the occasional well-timed bluff. In short, I was playing my A game, and it was proving successful. Out of the 139 entries, I was the chip leader with 50 players remaining, and prizes paid out to the top 20. Play continued for two hours and I was doing great – in third place with 12 players remaining – and then I ran into time odds.

Time odds are when a player has a time they have to leave by and, if the other players know it, mean the player has nothing to lose because they cannot stay for the rest of the tournament. I had a family dinner commitment at six, and the tournament was taking longer than expected. So there I was, sitting in third place, with one player to go out before the final table, and I had to dump my chips because I couldn’t stay any longer. I was dealt pocket jacks (JJ) and made a standard raise. I had one caller and the flop came 8-8-A. I made a pot-sized bet, figuring my opponent had at least an ace. He raised me, confirming my suspicion, so I went all in for the rest of my chips. He called and the board came blank-blank. He won the pot with trip 8s and I was out in eleventh, the bubble boy.

If I had had at least 10 more minutes, I would have just folded my way to the final table and felt a lot better about having to leave. As it stands, I just didn’t have the time to play any differently, and I was a bit cranky about it for a while. So close! At least I made the money, which was my first priority after all, and received 139k for my efforts. Next time, I’ll be sure that I don’t have any potential conflicts before entering tournaments, cuz it sucks to be playing so well and have to leave it prematurely. And hey, I didn’t bust out earlier, so things definitely could have gone worse. 🙂