12 PM Mar 15 2012, Bicycle Casino (L.A.), Winnin' o' the Green, 37th (81 entries)

This same tournament I played in yesterday went a little better today as first of all I did not need to re-enter, and this time my initial stack of 6K chips rose to over 30K at one point. What really cut into this decent-sized stack were two all-in "coin flip" situations preflop, neither of which went my way. In the first one I limped into the pot in early position with

The player to my left went all-in with a little over 10K left in chips. Everyone else folded, then I stopped to think for a bit about whether or not to call. Since the player only had 10K left and the blinds and antes were now up to 100-400-800, it seemed to me that he could have lots of different hands, so I decided to call. He turned over

I mainly just didn't want to see AK, QQ, KK, or AA, so this was fairly good news. If I'd known this is what he had, I would still have called. Unfortunately the flop came

which immediately reduced my winning chances to 0%.

This took away about 1/3 of my chips, but I still had an average-sized stack of about 22K left. I didn't get any good cards for awhile, so the blinds and antes ate away another 4K or so, until I caught

in early position. I limped in, the player to my left called, then it got folded around to the big blind who put in a 3x raise to 3600. After a short bit of deliberation I decided to go all-in even though the big blind had a lot more chips than I did. The player to my left folded, then the big blind stopped to think about whether to call or not. He seemed close to folding, which I hoped he would, but he finally called and turned over

This time I had the slight advantage preflop holding the underpair against the two overcards. But alas the flop once again completely turned the situation against me, coming

My winning chances were suddenly down to less than 10%. No seven fell on the turn or river so I was out in 37th place.