Mixers, 5/22

I started strong, winning a decent pot early. People were raising regularly so I mostly called with a variety of drawing hands...medium suited connectors, stuff like that...and after the first blind level I was up 25 chips. Hmm. The first real change came with blinds at 50/100 when everyone limped and I picked up Kings in the big blind. I raised 500. One caller (Tor). Another 500 on the flop and I had picked up over 1000 chips on that pot.

The one hand I did get, I knew Dee would overplay two pair. I caught a Queen High flush and after she bet the turn I went all-in, she called, and that was it for Dee.

By never showing my cards I made myself a mystery. I won with straights, flushes, trips, without ever showing and they were convinced I was bluffing. So they kept folding. But that did lead to probably the biggest mistake I made of the night.

I had q/9, a hand I play from the big blind. The flop was q/k/q, two hearts. The guy to my right bet out, I called (quickly...I should have "thought" for a while to make it seem I was on a draw), a couple more callers. Turn brought a second spade, giving 2 flush draws. He raised again, I briefly considered, knew I should call and keep everyone in, but thought he might call if I went all-in so did so. Probably cost myself 4 - 6 thousand with that impetuous move. They thought I was bluffing but did not have hands strong enough to call.

Kept rolling along building a stack of about 10K by the time the final table came around. Due to a huge all-in involving 4 people we only had 6 people. I made a few 4 times the blind raises, got paid off a few times but could not get above 10 - 12K, never short stack but never a threat, either. By the time we were down to 3 one guy had 23K, the other about 14K and I was still about 10K. 14K took out the 23 and it was heads up. I sucked out a couple times but never made any real headway and went out in second. Other than that one hand I played fairly solidly and doubt I could have done much better.