Wow these things are addictive! Didn’t have much of a chance to play poker tonight but somehow I always manage to squeeze in a couple of SNG’s…
Went out on the bubble in the first one, fourth place… I was crippled early and never really came back. No hands of note so I won’t bore you with any details.
The second was much more interesting, had rockets (pocket aces) hold up early to double me through then kept a pretty much steady stack size until the final four. Played the bubble tight and watched the short stack get knocked out to put me in the money.
This is where things got a little interesting, my two opponents were (in my opinion) playing quite well. Everyone was stealing their share of the blinds and pushing at the correct time, I’d been doing alright myself and had worked my way up to slight chip leader when in the small blind I was dealt:
Now as I’d folded my previous two small blinds I thought this might be a good opportunity to steal the big blind (blinds at this point were 200/400) and I raise it up to $800.
He flat calls and we see a flop:
I’m first to act and as I’ve hit top pair I bet the pot ($1600), action goes over to him and he re-raises me another $800.
Now, before I continue I should mention that I had been taking down quite a few pots on the flop using pot sized bets… he’d seen this (and been a victim of it previously) and I my instinct told me at this point he was testing me to see if I was bluffing. I re-raise him back all-in.
He calls.
I take a look at his cards:
He’s hit middle pair against my top pair and I smile knowing I made the correct read. Poker, however, is a game of highs and lows. That was the high, here’s the low:
Turn:
River:
He hits a runner-runner flush and the smile is quickly wiped off my face.
This left me with around $800 in chips and backed into a corner I had no choice but to put it all-in a couple of hands later with:
On a flop of:
I was instantly called by the same player who’d taken my chips earlier and he showed me:
He’d limped in with rockets and set me up beautifully, he must have been pretty happy with himself… until:
Turn:
River:
Revenge is sweet, I got lucky and was able to play my normal game again and within a few hands my nemesis had handed the rest of his chips over to myself and the eventual tournament winner.
The final hand was a race, I hit a king high four flush on the flop and ended up all-in against a pair of jacks. I missed my flush and that was all she wrote.
Some would say getting all-in on a draw is a pretty reckless (stupid?) move and I would agree, but after surviving that previous big hand I think I was lucky to be in second place at all. It seemed like a good spot to push heads up, but it fell through this time… I’ll have to keep practicing! 
