Round 3: The Poker Shark

The good times kept rolling for me in round three. Especially as we neared the final table “bubble,” I noticed my opponents tighten up significantly, which played well to my looser style. I was able to take a lot of blinds and induce some folds on the flop to grow my stack. Seeing a lot of timely, premium hands come my way certainly helped my cause as well. I was able to get all-in preflop against a small stack three times, with AA, AK, and AQ respectively. My hand held up each time, and the last time resulted in the final knockout of the day. I ran into trouble once when I put in a large reraise with KK from the big blind against an under the gun open raiser, who had a sizeable stack but less than me at the time. He called, and the flop ran out A47 rainbow. I bet a third of the pot, which was half his stack, with the idea to bet the minimum that would force either a jam or a fold from my opponent. I was hoping for a fold, since if he decided to ship I knew I would almost surely be behind and have to lay down my hand. He tanked for a few minutes before going all-in, and I had to fold, which cost me a chunk of my stack. I was able to rebuild it a little at the end of the round by going after the blinds whenever I had a playable hand, and definitely have enough behind to make a real run at first place. Hopefully the great fortune I’ve enjoyed thus far will last one more round, I’m counting on it! If it does, I know I’ll be a tough out, although all of my opponents left in the tournament all seem to be good players. Quite a few other sharks in these waters…. can’t wait to see what’s in store for the final round!