I start off on a decent table with one good online player and Gavin Smith. I lose the first three pots I play and get down to about 170k.

Then I make a really good value bet against Gavin with 88 on a 392T3 board and get paid off bringing me back up to around 220k.

To my disappointment I get moved to another table which is obviously the toughest table in the tournament. Vivek Rajkumar, Steve Paul Ambrose, Erik Seidel etc etc. All with MASSIVE chips distributed to them after the chip leader from day 2 went from half a mil to bust in 1 level :O.

I quickly make my table presence known by doubling up Steve Paul Ambrose after he raised to 8k from early/mid at 1500/3000 and I shoved 60k more effective with AQ and lost to his AK. K dry dry on the flop too, give me a good sweat at least ;(.

I'm left with 120k, which is only 20 BBs, and have some serious work to do. For the next couple hours I try my best in maintaining a 15+ BB sweat so that I could continuously have a stack appropriate for restealing.

I fluctuated between 10-25 BBs for the next 3 hours and really couldn't get much going.

I finally ended up getting moved to a really soft table. Only recognizable player was Kathy Liebert and she was on my right.

It looked like I would have plenty of spots to accumulate on this table, but with my stack I really had to be careful about raising with hands I wasn't committing with as I didn't want my perfect re-steal stack to turn into a vulnerable push/fold stack.

I ended up accumulating just enough to continue keeping me at the 15-20BB stack as the blinds increased.

My bust-out hand came when an older guy who had been quite active raised UTG to 58k at 4000/8000 with about 140k behind, CLEARLY making a mistake and meaning to only put in 24k. Kathy Liebert from 3rd position reraised to 120k and I shoved in 4th position with QQ ...

I didn't even think about it at the time. In fact, I was happy to get my chips in. But maybe it's not as easy of a spot as I think? I don't know, maybe I'm just being results-oriented, because Kathy ended up having aces. She held and I came 33rd for about 30k CAD.

Overall it was a great tournament and I'm really glad I came back to my home and native land for it :) It's the one tournament I really want to do well in since it's on Canadian soil.

The last 2 years I was out midway through day 1, so I'm happy that my 30k cash ended up making me a break even player in this specific tournament =)

I'm off to EPT Budapest, Amsterdam and EPT Warsaw next.

--Sorel Mizzi

Sign up via PokerListings link to Sorel's home site, Betfair Poker, and take advantage of our exclusive up to $1,500 bonus at 100% match.

More blogs from Betfair Poker pro Sorel Mizzi:

• Day 2 Niagara: Short Stack to Top 10 Stack
• Day 1 Niagara: Should Have Shoved on the Flop
• Cutting Down on Mistakes
• Backkkk in Business

ShareThis