Dinner break!

With two hours to go, I have 345,000.  There are 243 players left and the average chip stack is 444,000.

It’s kind of like Day 1 - just a series of ridiculously mediocre hands for a stretch of two hours.  J7, J4, 68, Q3.  You look down at those cards and can’t help but shake your head at how unplayable they are.

What I need to do is keep my eye on preserving what I have in order to get to Day 3.  The table has a lot of solid players at this point, so I can’t really make the moves I was making earlier in the tournament.

Instead, I have to start thinking about all-ins.  As my chips fade, so does my leverage.  I have about fifteen big blinds, and traditional poker strategy dictates that when you get to ten big blinds, your only move is a shove.

I HATE that - it makes the game so much more binary.  You live or die on that one bet.  But that’s the endgame of a freeze out tournament - all of the players except the winner will be there at some point.

So, I am eating a healthy salmon dinner with some Diet Coke for stimulation and will be ready for the last two hours of the day.

Wish me luck - I need it.