Finally a 1st!! - "In order to live, you must be willing to die"

and this is what I won (never mind the $, it was a $1 buyin cause they couldn't get it as a freeroll)



More importantly is what I learned from my MTT play.

I played this one completely without fear of busting. No prizes that I really wanted to win, and just played it just cause I felt like playing some poker. Though I never had to suckout either. My only close call was a rivered K, AK vs QQ.
Headsup, was probably the best headsup I have seen myself play. Down approx 6:1 I took a Phil Ivey approach. Everytime I was on the button, I raised. My call and fold was about the same, 3 times each at most. Many times I would get the blinds, many times it was call, check, bet, fold. I was reraising him like crazy if he tried to steal my blinds. I'm pretty sure I got him so frustrated that in the end, I never put him allin, always got him to go allin when I felt I had the best hand.

Compare that with my Doyle's room Bounty tournament which I was playing at the same time. Not sure why I played it, just did. I had an ok stack, doubled up once, but still made a questionable laydown which I think turned it around. Now if it was a deep stack tourney, this laydown might not be so bad, but at the quick blind structure of the Tribeca tables, I think I screwed up.

Holding AQ I raised preflop in MP, might have been a limper but he's out of the picture. Bigger stack blind calls. Flop of 9TJ, 2 clubs. Blind puts in a bet that would lead to me being pot committed. A fold puts me at average. I ended up laying it down with the reasoning that the field is so weak, I'll get my chances to win pots later. What I failed to realize was that the blind structure would not let me play too much poker later. If I had doubled up there I would have had a nice stack and the opportunity to dominate the rest of the way.

Lesson learned, and I'm ready tonight for whatever mtt I play. Nothing going on this weekend, have a saturday wedding and a sunday baptism.

"... In order to live, you must be willing to die ..." - Amir Vahedi