Faldo Finishes 7th in PokerStars Ante Tourney

It was another final table out of 360 players for Faldo on Sunday. I also slipped in a 20th place finish on Cake Poker in a 284 player tourney, cashing also.

The ‘Ante’ tourney is a little different type of format. The blinds stay at 5 and 5 chips. But antes continue to increase. So in effect, except for position, the blinds are meaningless. Since my style of play makes Dan Harrington’s play look like Gus Hansen on steroids, I was a little concerned getting in this thing.

In short order, everyone was paying 100 chips for their cards and two guys had to throw in an extra 5 for the blinds. Big whoop! In my example here, the pot started with 910 chips, and it was only $5 to call.

Obviously, the entire table limps in, and it is up to the good player to drive people out to leave dead money in the center.

But many hands saw 7 to 9 players see a flop due to no raises – which meant it was as big of flop bingo as our NPP home game favorite “Triple bed Omaha Hi-Lo.” I think my experience in this area helped me. Niks Poker Palace - always a training ground!

Regardless of the texture of the flop, usually someone hit something, which made it both a dangerous game, and an excellent re-raise or bluff opportunity game.

To run this deep, I did get a few breaks along the way to survive. I had to move with (QJ) and flopped the nut straight. A big stack tripped up and another short stack had the flush draw and was there too. When they missed, I tripled up.

Then with three tables left, I had to go with K9 and was called by A5 and AT-suited, and spiked an international buy card [9] on the river to take that down.

Anyway, I managed to add 12 times the entry to my bankroll with my 2nd final table in October already!