PKR Saturday Poker Tourney

I played really well today. It actually hurt to catch cards.... Yep, I said it.... Within the first hour, I had pocket Aces twice and pocket kings twice and only won one of the four hands making healthy pre-flop raises. In only one of the hands did the guy who beat me have a hand that should have called my pre-flop raise. But I expect some of that as there are several very poor players in this tourney.... it's why I go! LOL. At any rate, probably one of the bigger hands that I played near the end of the tourney went like this. I am late in the rotation and Rick was the big blind. Randy raises the $6000 Blind another $10000. Everyone folds to me and I have 7h, 7s. I'm debating whether to re-raise or smooth call and I see that Rick in the big blind is short stacked and I'm pretty certain that he will call if I call. I re-raise all-in for another $18,000 and I've got Rick covered, but not Randy. He probably has another $10,000 or so. Randy is a very tight player and it is possible that he might even lay down a bigger pair to a big raise. At any rate, Rick calls and after much, much, much.... did I say much? deliberation, Randy calls. He turns over pocket fives. And amazing as it may seem, the sevens hold up against the fives and Rick's A, X.

When we got down to two players, me and Lenny, he (and others) asked if we were going to chop, but after a big hand for Lenny that knocked out JoeBob, he was slightly ahead in the chip count so I offered to let him have second right then or we could continue to play. LOL. He opted to continue playing. I took down a big pot that left him short stacked and when I raised pre-flop with A, Q, he reraised another $20,000 and I pushed all-in. He called with an A, 8 and thankfully didn't improve..... so I took down first place and also moved into first place in points in the overall ranking for the twelve game final table championship! Nice....