Final table appearance.

BB defender (me) calls a min raise with 10, 5 off.  (Bit loose, but there was a bit of history..)

Flop comes 6 high - 2,3, 6 in fact. 

The Raiser puts in a smallish c-bet. I float call...

turn comes another 6. this is a good bluff card me thinks, I bet out with a decent sized bet into the raiser. Unfortunately for me he calls. 

The river comes a sweet little 4. My hand is so disguised he can,t put me on it. I shove all in - not much more maybe 10 bigs. He eventually calls, he folds face down when he sees my cards and hits the roof. "How can you call with that.....etc".

The moral of this is....nothing, variance in poker is mad. This hand kept me in the tournament when I should have been blown out. The Villain probably had somewhere between aces and jacks. I went on to nail 8th place from about 160. That was a decent run for me and a decent cash. I should have done better as well, but got crippled with queens v AK, and never really recovered any momentum.
Still, a pretty sweet result after 2 days of full on poker.

Back To winning ways

I got back to winning ways with a 3rd place finish from about 50 players. Enroute tI had to survive a large number of coin flips.
I think most players think they are unluckier than most and you can,t help but remember the bad beats, but really every time your low pocket pair doubles up against two overs you are essentially flipping as the percentages are so marginal.
Some key hands on the way..
Had a decent start:

1. Pocket Queens doubling v AK
2. Then pocket Kings lost to q8 - turn and river are eights
3. Flopped a set of eights v pocket aces but the aces improved into nut flush.
4. Then got a triple up when I flopped open ended straight flush draw and shipped it, got called by 2 pair and I turned a straight.

Eventually with 5 players left and just over £2150 in pot, we did chop for £400 each and played out for the last £150 and 2 seats for £110 game.
I was down to about 5bb when I shipped from SB.  Q5ss got looked up by ace rag and I,m toast.

Pocket Queens and pocket queens.

It was good to reach another final table last night, after a pretty long session, as results haven't been great lately.

 The field was about 80 players. £3000 in the pot.

I,d been playing pretty solid for a few  hours and I was gradually increasing my stack till I hit the key hand:

There was an early position raise to 2200 from a pretty loose guy - blinds were 800/400 - the button calls and I look down at pocket queens on the big blind.
I,m out of position, so no point mucking about, I raise it to 7200, the LAG mucks pretty quick and the button whose a pretty weak player eventually calls - he's basically all in with a couple of hundred behind..
He turns over Ace Four - I show my queens - Ace Ball on the flop and I,ve dusted about half of my chips.

I then built it up gradually again to about 20BB over the next hour or two - then bluffed off half of it on a flop with 2 aces on it. I lost my balls on the river and folded my 7 high.

With 11 players left, the chip leader was in the BB with a mountain of chips and I was SB with 4BB - about 15,000 chips at 4k/2k/200. It got folded round to us and we both agreed to play the hand blind - I went all in and he called.
We ran out the cards and he turns over 7-2 off and I,ve got A 2 - sweet - Ace high is good and I double up.

82%  - "One Time"

I ducked and dived, for a few hours just managing to stay around the 6-12 bb level, and when the final table bubble burst we were down to 9 with 7 places paid.

FINAL TABLE

I was one of the 3 short stacks with about 35k with 6000/3000/500.
1st hand and a fellow shortstack busts out, he jams with suited J , 9 guy calls with A Q and we,re one place from the money.

Next hand I,m dealt junk and fold.

Next hand, I,m UTG +1 and I look down at pocket queens - not bad - after a bit of tough soul searching  I push the remainder of my modest stack into the middle...
 CALL!
I,m snapped off by an Italian player, he flips over pocket jacks.

Perfect - 82% favourite - finally some chips to play with - in the money etc...

Ah, you know the rest, jack on the flop and the money bubble boy is toast. Bah.