Playing Live

I went to a nice live SNG tourney in Toronto last night. Buy in was $60 to I was a bit intimidated to start out. Checking the list I got a good seat at a passive table where I had a good view (seat 2) of the entire table. Starting out I probably played a little too tight, but that helped me about an hour later when it started to become a push fest. Best play I saw at the table was a guy who limped from early position, and then smooth calls the 4x bb raise. Flop comes 2 5 6 and he pushes all in and gets a caller who has QQ. He turns over 34 and doubles up but that was an interesting play that made it all but impossible to know what he had. Against that guy I called an all in raise with AQo and he called behind me. Maybe I should have pushed to isolate but I figured that the loose guys calling would have less than me and I could put pressure on them on the flop. Instead I see Kd K 9d and I check and Mr. 34 raises for about 1/4 of my remaining stack. I fold as I don't even have the flush draw and he turns over Ad6d. I still like my play post flop to fold because I was even losing to any 9 at that point. Next time I will remember to reraise all in when it gets to me to make guys like that pay to see the flop with an inferior A.

Ended up going all in with 2 2 with blinds getting to 300/600 with me with 2.1k left so just more than a standard raise. Guy to my left pushes all in with 88 and another guy after that goes all in with AJ. An 8 was the first card off of the deck and that was the end of the tourney for me. I finished in 14th place out of 40 but next time I would be much more aggressive in the earlier rounds.

I have been quite tired since New Year's and late nights post Leafs games out downtown so I headed home without waiting for a seat at the 1/2 NL table that they had. Next week the goal is to sit down at one of those live ring games and try to pick off the bad players. I felt that I did well when I isolated myself against bad players in the tournament. If I can do that in a ring game then I should be able to build a decent stack.