Wow

Well, it looks like I reached my goal...

I am simply stunned. I joined a $2-tournament, but started off badly. After 20 games or so I was down to 470 (from a starting stack of 1000) due to some bad/impatient play. Then I managed to double up once, but that was certainly not the end of my troubles. With a stack of about 1000 I twice went allin against the same opponent, and twice we shared the pot! In both cases my hand was dominant postflop. Due to fast increasing blinds (every 5 minutes) my stack soon dropped to 378 (blinds 150/300). I decided to go allin on A4s and got called by... 96s? I missed the flop, the turn was a 6 and that would have been the end of my tournament had it not been for the Ace on the river.

With blinds up to 250/500 and a stack of 1006, I did a minraise of 1000 with QJo. After not one, not two, but three callers, I felt sure that this was the end of my tournament, until the flop showed Jxx. Thus I quadrupled and after this, I never really looked back...

Of course I had my share of good luck, I eliminated several short stacks with lucky river cards. Also it helped when one guy with 16000 left tried to bluff me off of top pair when I had KJ, board K44. I also had 16000 left at that point and did not believe him for a second, he turned out to have A7. That brought my stack to 58000 (blinds were 3000/6000 by this point, I had raised preflop). This happened just after I had reached the final table.

At this point I was looking at the prize structure and saw that each additional place would bring me about another $6. I continued to play conservatively with occasional steal attempts. Then, with 7 players left, I looked down to find 33. My stack was 46000 and the blinds were 5000/10000 by now, so I felt that I had to take a shot here. I did another minraise, to 20000, and got one caller. The flop was T87, two hearts. Here I bet 10k, leaving me with 16k. Looking at it now, I suppose that allin would have been better since I am clearly pot-committed after this bet. However, my opponent went allin himself, I called and he only had AJ. This put me up to a stack of 100k, the second largest stack was 67k at this point.

And then it happened. With four players left, I was BB and posted 15k. UTG with 22k goes allin, button folds, SB goes allin as well for 32k. Given the huge blinds, I simply did not expect these players to have really good hands; they were obviously in a lot of trouble and had to make a move. So I called with my AK. The flop was A54, UTG had KT and the button had A9. Suddenly I was heads-up and already assured of a win of $100 (though I did not look that carefully at the top of the payout structure and thought that first place was $100).

After this I played SAGE and came very close to winning. I was 2:1 up at one point when my A8 lost to K7 on the river. A few hands later I found AK and managed to split this pot with my opponent who had A8, after two pairs landed on the board. The next hand, my allin with QJ was called by 55 and all was clear after the flop was 5xx.

Still, an unbelievable win for me. I won several $5 SNGs in the past, but that is only a net profit of $20, so this was five times as much net profit as I had ever made before.

Now it is definitely time to move back to the $5 SNGs! Wish me luck...