Last night I played my first bar tournament. These are the types of games that are never advertised, never promoted and you have to know someone to get into. Not that it’s illegal in my state, it’s not (the law is kinda gray about it).

Anyway, the whole tournament is played by a bunch of locals who all know each other. It was $25 to enter with unlimited rebuys for the first hour, so pretty much a crap shoot. You start with $5000 in chips and the blinds go up every 20 minutes.

I played it tight early… the first hand someone called an all-in with AK high. No pair. No nothing. Just AK high! Crazy shit. So, tight was right.

I want to talk about two hands that stood out. One good. One bad.

1. This is the good hand. I had AQo under the gun (first after the BB). First let me say that I hate getting hands like AQ in such an early position. It’s just annoying. The blinds are $100/$200 at this point, so I raise to $700. A few callers (which is what it is, people would stick around just to see the flop), when a guy in middle position raises all-in. Everyone folds to me.

Okay, this the reason I don’t like AQ in early position. It’s just a bad hand here. There are too many things he could have that are dominating me, AA, KK, QQ, AK. At best, something like JJ, I’m in a coin flip… and even for a player like this one (this was the same guy who was all in during the first hand), someone would have to be down right crazy to raise an UTG raiser with JJ.

I fold. Everyone else folds. Mr. All-In flips up AK. So there you go. Good lay down by me, but nothing brilliant… I mean, read one poker book and you’d know that AQ was no good in this situation either.

2. I had about $4200 in chips. I was dealt A 8 in the BB. Blinds were at $100/$200 still and a bunch of limpers come along, per usual. I don’t have anything great here, so I check.

The pot is $1200 and the flop comes K 9 4.

I check. The person to my immediate left raises $700. Everyone folds to me. I immediately push all-in. Maybe a foolish move considering how loose the table was… but what else was I going to do? I mean, certain for $700 more I was going to call… I thought if I pushed all-in, at least I’d have a chance at winning it right then… and if he called, no matter what he had, I was only a 3 to 2 dog at worst.

Anyway, the guy goes into the tank for a bit, then he looks at me and says, “Flush draw?” Without thinking, I raised an eyebrow. This was all he needed. He called and flipped over King-rag… which held up.

I gave it away by giving my hand away when confronted with table talk. I didn’t rebuy, but I left disappointed that I had basically lost control of my eyebrow and give away my hand.

Stupid.

More on tells later.

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