I came 13th out of 2800 players in the $1500 NLHE tournament, event 51 in the WSOP. Very tough 3 days. I was very lucky in the first 2 days, but the 3rd day didn't go well. On the first day I flopped an incredible amount of sets and had great cards - oh, I also I played them well :), but to be honest most of them played themselves. At least two times people pushed all-in against me with no outs. Other times with very few outs. That is lucky too.

The 2nd day was tough. I wanted to push the bubble but things turned out to be different. I had no good situations to push the bubble at all, moreover I had to lay down top pair (once combined with the nut flush draw on the turn), which is very hard on the second day of such a fast tournament. And it costs a lot of chips, too. But both times I was beaten. Even with the pair of aces and me having the ace of diamonds - I was facing a made flush and I didn't have the odds nor the chips to call an all-in on the turn. So I laid it down.

There were 30 of us left for day 3. My seating was horrible and I was totally card dead for the 4 hours I played on day 3. I had AQ once and that is it. I had to lay down AJ facing a two-way all-in already (I would have been knocked out). And then this A7 with which I got knocked out was my 3rd best hand. It was a 6-handed table with 13 people left in the tournament. I picked up A7o on the button. There was 90k in the pot from blinds and antes, the big blind was 30k. I had 370k, so it is a pretty obvious push, a no-brainer. The small blind picked up A8 and he had a lot of chips, too, so he called and he even hit his 8.

I am not unhappy, but I am sad that I missed a big opportunity to get to the final table and do well there. However there is so much you can do without any cards at the end of a tournament. That is why I am not unhappy. You can't help it, you must win showdowns, it doesn't work otherwise. This was my first all-in that was called which is a good result given that I never had much - I had reasonable and semi-reasonable hands. I don't think I could have done anything much better or much differently. I mean if I have the A8 and he has the A7, I push and he calls, same thing, with opposit results.

There were several things that didn't work out. First of all my original strategy was not doable. Then we were reseated when we got down to 3 then 2 tables. So I had to reassess the situation each time. By the time I worked out my new set-up for 2 tables, I was gone. Oh, well, next time :)