There is card dead....

...and then there is "card dead" - basically the summary of my Monday night tourney. 2 hours of 9-2 off, Q-4 type hands that must be folded when early position raises and reraises come at you - with an occasional successful steal or river bluff with rags paying.

Final tourneys, in this league, are rather messed up in quite a few respects:

1) Normally tourney starts out 5 to 6-handed, merge to final table of 10...at this time, you can accumulate chips, see lots of hands due to position, and more hands are raisable/playable here. Not the case here, since it's 10-handed.

2) Everyone starts out with same amount of chips - in normal tourney, short-stack and big-stack strategy used.

3) No advantage for finish (position, or points) during "regular season"

4) 50% more chips for a 10-player tourney with same blind levels as 30+ man tourneys run every week really don't come close to making it the "Deep stack tourney" that the organizer wants.

Enough whining, but it was a frustrating night, since my reads were spot-on (for most part), but just didn't have the ammunition...or ran into monsters in the blinds when stealing. Hey, that's poker, and it happens sometimes that you play well and still don't finish well - but at least I got a free t-shirt and hat for my troubles.

Went out 7th with, oddly enough, the best hand I saw for 2 hours - pocket 8's. Brother Bob donk min-raised with 3-3 from UTG, I looked at 8-8 and shoved for last 2100 (200/400 blind level just reached), and called by Volcano Ron (with 75 more chips) holding Q-Q...Brother Bob folds face-up, and Q-Q holds.

Doesn't look like charity poker is in my future for a couple of weeks, due to wife's medical issues and tax work (plus main job, to be honest) taking up most of my time.