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Last night was the championship poker tourney at Oaklawn that I qualified for last month and I could not be happier with how I played. The key hand happened fairly early on, at my first table, when I made a nearly impossible laydown that kept me from going broke. I had pocket kings and made a standard pre-flop raise and got two callers--a short stack who was playing pretty conservatively, and an Ernest Hemingway lookalike who had already amassed a ton of chips and seemed to be playing a little strangely but getting very lucky. The flop was queen high rainbow, and I was out of position. I led out with an amount just big enough that I figured the shortie would raise all-in if he had hit anything, and that's exactly what he did. I knew I had him beat. Knew it. He either had something like pocket tens or jacks, or a pair of queens with a decent kicker. So he shoved, just like I hoped. Then Hemingway flat called. Hmm. I didn't see this coming, and I smelled a rat. I could not for the life of me figure out what he had here, but it just didn't feel right. I knew that an all-in over the top by me would get a call, and I really didn't want that. Add in the chance of the short stack also having a shot to draw out on me, and suddenly I didn't like my chances. So I mucked it.

The short stack had made queens, just like I thought, so I had him crushed. But Hemingway had flat called with Ace-Jack. He had a gutshot, a backdoor flush draw, and one over card, and he called a huge flop bet. Really?!? The turn was an ace, he rivered his flush, and had I stuck around I definitely would have been out of the tournament. It was a very unconventional fold, but it was early enough that I knew I could find a better spot to put my tournament life on the line. It turns out I would end up seeing Hemingway again at the final table.

I could never really get anything going. I was just clawing to keep my stack viable, stealing the blinds here and there. It was a really soft field, but the combination of my cards and my stack just didn't give me too many chances to get super creative. I got pocket aces in late position once, and after several limpers I popped it up to five times the big blind, just hoping to thin the field a little. From the looks I got you would have thought I stood up and took a dump on the table. Everyone folded. It was a very friendly kind of crowd, and everyone just wanted to see flops.

I think I was 9th out of nine in chips at the final table at one point, with Hemingway and another player that I knew from my qualifying round each holding almost ten times as many chips as me. Thus, I was ecstatic when the talk about making a deal happened when we were seven handed. The talk seemed legit enough that I folded a king-queen that I normally would have pushed with...which became painful when the hand would have made me quad kings. Finally, six handed, the deal was agreed on, throwing some cash to places 4-6 instead of just the top three. I kept playing solidly, chipping up with all-ins a couple of times before getting knocked out with pocket eights against a big stack's ace-jack, which made two pair. I was thrilled with how I played, honestly. I've gotten so much better the last few years and it felt great to see so many reads turn out right, and to recognize plays that I made that worked that I would not have had the skill or experience to pull off even a couple of years ago. It would have been nice if my eights held up, because then I would have been a real threat to get to the top three and probably heads up, but hey, that's poker. It was a fun tourney, I made some cash, and it felt good to play well.