Poker Player of the Year

So at work we have many poker enthusiasts. We have internal discussion lists with decent activity usually talking about suck outs, bad beats, or when to fold KK. There is pretty much at least one tournament or cash game going on every night of the week and many times both. So it was suggested that we keep track of tournament winnings to determine who would be considered Poker Player of the Year.

I believe we are using the same algorithm for calculating points as the one used by CardPlayer magazine. It is based on number of players, buy-in amount, and place you finished. We had only started calculating points about 3 weeks ago, but I was in Bora Bora so I couldn't play in any of the tournaments that counted towards points. And then I was in Hawaii so I missed out on those as well. In all, I had only played in 3 tournaments and bubbled out on a Badugi tournament (which earned 0 points since you have to place in the money). But last night I got to play my first No Limit Texas Hold'em Tournament for points since getting back from Hawaii. It was a $30 buy-in for 3000 chips. We had 38 players. We started out with 3 tables of 10 and allowed the 8 alternates to play as people busted out. When we combined to two tables, I was one of the short stacks. However, I was able to survive to the final table, still a short stack even though I got more chips since the blinds kept going up.

On the final table, I waited patiently for good cards and even folded good hands (like AQo) if a bigger stack raised since I didn't have enough chips to get them out of the pot. However, I won enough pots to have a decent stack. Then two key hands happend that made me the chip lead. The two chip leads were sitting next to each other to my right (so they act before I do). One of them makes a large raise. It gets folded to me. I have AA, so I push all-in. He calls since my raise wasn't much more than his initial bet. He had something like KQo and I double up. A few hands later, that same person limps in. The now chip lead raises. It's folded to me and I have QQ. I again push all-in. He calls and slightly has me covered. He has 44. I double up again and he's left with a little more than the BB. Even though I was a big chip lead at this point, by the time we were down to 5 handed (the final table had 10, top 7 got paid) I had lost a good amount of my chips but still had a small lead. There wasn't really any hands that stood out and I aggressively played strong hands and folded marginal hands. Long story short, we're not the final two. I'm second in chips, but we're basically equal. I'm in the BB and get dealt A9o. The chip lead goes all-in. I think about it for a moment and the odds of him having a better hand are low, at best he might have a small pair which would be a coin flip. So I call and he has KQo. I win that pot and he's left with just a little more than the BB. Of course I raise him all-in in the dark (meaning I didn't have to look at my cards) and he has to call. I have T5o and he has 73o. I end up winning the tournament which pocketed me $410 and I got 500 points which put me into 4th place as of right now (1st place has 1051 points right now). So not too bad for a Tuesday night :P