Shef-failed :-(

After my last chirpy post about the overnight situation at Sheffield's Summer Festival, this one will be a little more somber.

I returned to day 2 with the chip lead (all be it a marginal one) and left about 2 hours later with nothing more than an all-over numb feeling and double my buy-in scruffily shoved into the back pocket of my jeans. Its not like i murdered my stack, its more a case of i never got going and nothing really happened for me. Perhaps i tried to force it a little and press home my chip advantage on the table (although on reflection, it wasn't that much of an advantage as nothing more than 5 BB's seperated the top 4 players and no-one was too far behind to cause a problem). Playing on tables of 7, you're never really that far from the button when not in the blinds, which encouraged me to get busy early, which also on reflection was perhaps a little reckless and i had to lay down AJ and 44 to all-in re-raises within the first half hour. This put me on the back foot and i slipped down right into the pack again. I managed to re-raise my neighbour all-in just prior to the final in a battle of the blinds, which got me up to 40k(ish) (he showed AQ and folded, I mucked J4 and smiled) and i soon after stumbled into the final with 38k with the blinds at 2k-4k and an average stack of 50k. I was 7th out of 10 starting the final and the chip leader probably had around 100k, so i had room to play but wasn't in great shape really.

I lasted all of 1 hand in the final when i was dealt AK UTG+1 and raised to 12k. Everyone folded apart from the BB who was 2nd in chips. He pushed all-in and i wasn't folding for my last 36k with blinds at 2k-4k and me having to pay them next hand. I put him on 10-10, JJ or QQ and couldn't refuse a race for what the pot was offering and the pot woul have made me chip leader once more, so i called. He turned over J-J and i missed. - OUT!

It felt like such a failure. All i could think about coming back for day 2 was how useful £10k would be to me at the moment and how even a three or four way chop would do nicely. I didn't anticipate failure and a few scraps to take home but i suppose that's tournament poker - you can die at any moment! I analysed it all the way home but i don't think i can play it any differently. I am not cold folding AK, although i suppose i could have limped with it UTG+1 and checked out the action - its marginal. Any thoughts anyone?

Notts Gala have a £500 NLHE over the BH weekend that i am toying with the idea of playing. £500 is at the top end of what i would willingly ante up for a tourney so i guess i'll just see how i feel about it later in the week. Maybe i'll just buy a lottery ticket on wednesday and see how i'm running. :-)