First tournament in Pendleton

I got into Pendleton last night at about 5, and bought my tournament tickets because this place has huge lines to buy-in the day of the tournament. Then I played cash games for a few hours before going to the hotel at like 10. I won about $800, and played pretty well. Today I woke up feeling pretty good about the shootout No-Limit Hold em tournament. (in a shootout you must win all the chips off of your starting table of 9 in order to advance. In all other tournaments seats are filled as players bust out.) I played well at my first table and was able to be the last one standing of 2 or 3 other good players and 6 or 7 weaker players. The final three were the three best which is usually not the case, but it made for tough 3-handed and heads-up play.

After a 2 hour break, the remaining 33 resumed play. I didn't really do anything for the first hour, then got lucky when I made a flush against a guy's AA. After that I played very well and after doubling up with AK vs. 88 with 11 players remaining, I was in good shape for the final table. I was picking up some blinds until I played a big pot against the chip leader when I was second in chips, and I was out sixth (of 318). After analysing that hand, I don't feel I made a mistake although I have not talked to any other good poker players about it. To be honest, I don't want to even explain the hand on here because it was quite an advanced play, and it should be used sparingly, so I wouldn't want any readers of this blog to read this and start making similar plays in wrong situations.

Sixth place was $4k +change, while first was 16,000. I believe second was like 13,300, and the rest I don't know because my eye was really on #1, as always in tournaments. I'm fairly disappointed because I know that I was the best player of the remaining 6 by quite a large margin. However, based on the structure of this tournament, the blinds had gotten extremely high, so luck was a much higher factor.

The tournaments tomorrow and Saturday will much bigger, so hopefully I can win one of those. I think writing this was therapeutic because I already feel better about it.