Introduction

I'm going to present some interesting hands from a tournament I played on PokerStars. The game was limit 5-card draw. The buy-in was a dollar, and there were 294 entrants. I'm probably going to report approximately 15 % of the hands I played, so reading all of them might take more than a couple of minutes.

I'm not including hands where I just raised and everyone else folded, but I think I played a little more aggressively than most players in this tournament. There was one hand that I played too aggressively, but I'm not going to post that one...

If you don't want to look through all the hands, I have some information about the most interesting hands here:

first table
----------
25: First "cooler"
32: Some loose limpers...
45: First bluff
65: First "interesting" laydown
77: Slowplayed by an opponent...
87: First all-in
120: First and only check-raise (and I possibly sucked out badly)
125: First elimination

Into the money
----------------
137: A failed attempt to take the blinds
156: Big confrontation without me involved
163: I win a decent pot with a decent hand
185: A huge pot where both my opponents overplay

In the money
--------------
197: First hand ITM. All-in against two opponents
202: You need some luck in tournaments...
208: I get lucky again
229: 2nd elimination
247: Someone tried to bully me...
252: First pat hand, 3rd elimination

My last table
--------------
275: An opponent betting into an empty sidepot...
286: Ace high winning in showdown
325: 4th elimination
338: A pat bluff. Ten high...
361: Straight flush draw
376: 2nd legitimate pat hand
386: 5th elimination
395: The raise-fold technique
400: The final hand

I've arranged the hands in four posts. The hands are numbered, so it shouldn't be too hard to find my pat bluff (338) or the three-way all-in (197) if that's what you're looking for.


In the early stages of this tournament, there were few uncontested pots. The other players were just routinely calling with suboptimal hands. When we got closer to the money, I won quite a few pots uncontested from the big blind:

#97: [9c 4h Ac 8s 8h]
#113: [7s 2h 7c 2c 4c]
#119: [Ks 9s 7c Ts As]
#130: [5s Ah Ad 2c Qs]
#147: [Jd Ah 4s 7c 5h]
#220: [Js 3h 6c 8c Qc]
#290: [4d Tc Qh 9c 2s]
#294: [5d 2s 6s 5h 4d]
#298: [Qh 8s Js 8c 8d]
#349: [2s As 5h 7h 3c]
#370: [Kd Jc 4c Jd Ad]
#385: [2c 3c 4h Qs Jd]
#392: [7h 3s Ks Ah 5d]

Except for hand #298, I think it was mostly ok to win these uncontested.