Trainwreck

At my first table, I was seated between JoeSpeaker and BadBlood. Even when you consider that the average skill level of the people in this tourney was unusually high, this was still a terrible draw. Does it matter which one was on my left? As it happens, it was BadBlood.

From BadBlood's recap: "During the first hour or so at my first table, I was fortunate enough to have that poker experience that can only be described as great timing. The combination of good cards against ones that are slightly worse and aggressive play against hands that had missed the flop let me take an early chip lead. Because I was showing down the hands that had hit, my table image was that of a card rack. This was true, but not as much as the table believed."

It seemed to me that BadBlood was all over every move I made, and it looks like he thought so, too. From my notes, which are brief due to a lack of notable play on my part: "Every time I have a decent pre-flop hand and bet out, BadBlood44 is there, and when the flop misses me he is able to turn the screws, having amassed a huge stack by the first break. 58 remaining out of 69 and I'm getting into push mode."

And there you have it. I could have played much better, but after missing a couple of flops and having BadBlood punish me, I got gunshy, and that's no way to play poker. In the end, I pushed with KJ and was knocked out by Derek's AK. Congratulations to Gracie, who took down the grand prize.