Last night Dave and I played a few online tournaments together. It was a brainstorming session, and allowed us to help each other with our games. We played three 45 and one 90-person games, all two at a time. Our finishes were 1st, 5th, 5th and 46th. We invested $104 and cashed for $540. Not a bad performance at all, but just imagine what Dave could do by himself if I wasn't there to hold him back.

In the game where Dave took the lead toward the end, he won first place pretty easily. In another game where I took the lead toward the end things didn't go so well. I might not have all the details exactly right, but these should be pretty close...

We were five-handed in a 45-person game, so we were just inside the money. We were the short-stack because I had bluffed away half our chips a few hands earlier. Average stack was 13,500 and we had ~ 9,000 left with blinds of 400/800.

It folded to us on the button and we raised to 2,400 with K-7 suited and got smooth called by the calling station in the big blind. There were ~ 5,200 chips in the pot and we had ~ 6,800 back. Flop came something like Q-7-3 with 2 spades, the big blind check raised us all-in, and we called with middle pair king kicker. He had middle pair, flush draw (6-7).

This hand upset me for a few reasons.

First, I'm still mad at myself for bluffing away half of our chips just a few hands before. None of our four remaining opponents was very good, and I believe we could have finished first or second if I had a little more self-control.

Second, I don't know why I didn't raise all-in pre-flop. Making a normal sized raise into a calling station with lots of chips when I only have nine big blinds in my stack was just stupid.

Third, I think we should have pushed all-in post-flop instead of pricing ourselves into calling his all-in check-raise. He made it impossible for us to fold, when we could have made it possible for him to fold.

Open for criticism.