Delaware Park Ironman

So I played the Delaware Park Ironman poker tournament this past weekend. This tournament had no breaks. I took off Friday so I could play the $65 satellites to get into the tournament without having to pay $550. I played four satellites but didn't make one. I then played another satellite on Saturday morning at 9am but busted out even after rebuying once. So $390 down the drain. Good thing I was able to make that in a $2/$5 cash game to cover expenses.

The Ironman began at noon on Saturday and they were trying to break a record to longest continuous tournament. I believe their goal was 36 hours. We began with $50K in chips, first level at $50/$100 and one hour levels. Couldn't believe it but someone busted out on the first level. I could tell some people were not used to the increased chip stack and increased blind levels as the bets oftentimes were much higher than the level would indicate.

I played somewhat loose in the beginning which didn't help me much as I got down to about $30K but then was able to work it back to the starting stack of $50K. Later I limped with TJs and was raised 2.5x by a player who held AA (raise was too small IMO). I decided to see a flop which gave me an open ended straight flush draw. Even though my opponent flopped trip aces, I called his push (I had him covered) and hit my straight. This brought me up to about twice the average chip stack. Later as the blinds escalated I basically hovered around average in chips.

When we got down to two tables (36 players got paid) I raised with AQ and a very loose aggressive player pushed and I called but this time he held a hand and showed AA. I was left with 1.5 times the big blind and was UTG the next hand. My hand was KT and since it was better than average I decided to push and played against two other players (one limper and the big blind who was priced in). They checked it down but I hit two pair and got some chips. Then I selected pushed five more times and won each time uncontested. Then I won a flip with 99 versus AJ and had about 1/2 of the average stack.

We made the final table at exactly 12 noon on Sunday, exactly 24 hours after we started. I was able to limp into the final table with a super short stack. Unfortunately I busted when it was folded to me in the small blind and I pushed with K9 and the big blind woke up with Ax and won. Payout was $3,465 but first place would have been around $43.7K. Have to win one of these someday.

Thanks to the Pokermeister for providing me with a link of the final results.