CHIMPS and Steps

Before the CHIMPS event last night I decided to play a step 2. On the very first and I get Q,Q in the BB. Its folded to the SB and he raises to 120. I make it 360 to go and he shoves. I call and he has A,K. He hits the K on the flop and I am done just like that.

I signed up for another and pretty much didn't play that many hands. When the stakes went to 50/100 I get A,A UTG. I have 1100 behind and call. As usual a MP player shoves for 1600 and its folded to me and I call. He has 10,10 which is actually higher than most people shove with. The door card is a 10 and I am done in 7th.

In the CHIMPS event I had an interesting hand in the first level. I bet POT with A,A,x,x single suited. Someone re-pots it and we end up getting it all in. He had A,A single suited as well and we chopped the hand. I didn;t get much after that gettign as high as around 1700. On my last hand I bet pot with K,K,x,x single suited and got raised. I called and the flop came Q,Q,x. I shoved and got called by A,A,x,x and I was out in 19th.

I decided to play one of my step 3 tokens after the bustout. In these 1st-2nd move on the step 4 and 3rd-5th redo step 3. This structure lends itself to playing very tight just trying to get to 5th then you can gamble it up to try and get a top 2. I played tight including folding K,Q suited and A,J off in early position or if I was facing a raise. It just doesn't seem to pay to play these hands.

The tournament started at 9:46. We got down to 5 players at 10:20. Then the marathon started. Numerous short stack doubled up and everyone was pretty even in chips after a while. We didn't drop down to 4 people until 10:51. 31 minutes playing 5-handed!!! We dropped to 3 handed at 10:55 and ended it at 11:05. When we were three handed the chip leader had 1/2 the chips and me and the other were pretty even. The big stack tried to wait it out and soon we were all even in chips. On the last the stacks were as follows:

Button: 5500
SB: 3500
BB (me): 4500

The button folds. This smae scenario happened about 8 times heads-up and the SB shoved into me every time. I decided that if I had Q,9 or better or any K or A I was going to call. I got K,5 this time and decided to call. He had Q,10. The flop comes with a K, turn a K and he is drawing dead.

Right now I have a step 4 and a step 3. My plan is to always have a back-up for each step I play. I won't play the step 3 till I win another step 2 etc. This should be a decent strategy.