I grew up in Menlo Park, CA. After college, I continued my stretch on the east coast working as a Technology Associate at SIG’s Bala office, where I’m currently a Developer on the Backtesting team. I had little poker experience before starting at SIG, but have come to describe my style as slow and steady. Outside of the office, I enjoy exploring the outdoors, rock climbing, and making music.
I was pleasantly surprised to make it Round 3 in my first SIG Poker Tournament. How did I make it this far? A combination of luck, playing very tight, and maybe a little reading of others’ poker faces. These worked well for me in the first two rounds, and I was able to fairly consistently win chips whenever I entered a hand. As a result, coming into Round 3, I was slightly below the median number of chips, but I wasn’t particularly worried – I decided to stick with my strategy. To me, this tournament is a game of patience and attrition, and I just had to wait for the right moment to strike.
I was dealt a few decent hands in the first hour of the night, allowing me to stay afloat of the rapidly increasing blinds. I didn’t manage to take away any big pots at this time though, perhaps because people had caught on that I was playing very tightly, or perhaps just because others were playing tightly as well. Then, I caught a lucky break where I was dealt AK suited in position, and others had already put in bets before me preflop. I was still short-stacked at the table, so I decided to go all-in preflop, and 2 people called me, putting around 35K chips in the pot. Unfortunately when the cards came down, there were no flush opportunities, and another player also had AK, so we ended up splitting the pot. I was left still short stacked at my table, and to make matters worse, shortly afterwards there was a flurry of hands played and my table was now down to 6 players, most with considerably more chips than I had.
With the reduced number of players, the blinds obligation went around the table very rapidly, and soon I was very far behind in chips. Seeing the hands that the others were playing, and knowing that the blinds would soon bleed me dry, I went all-in preflop on a semi-decent hand. Unfortunately I was called down and the flop didn’t help me at all. I ended up losing the hand, and was knocked out of the tournament.
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