I had taken a break of a couple of days from poker due to work commitments. Before the break I seemed to be out of form and had finished out of the money in a few tourmaments.
The usual pattern was that there was nothing doing, I could not catch a good starting hand, I could not hit a flop, I won a few bluffs, but my stack was sinking and the blinds were rising. I decided to go for a double up once I was below 10 BB when I hit top pair on the flop, was called by an inferior hand who lucked out on the turn or river, and I was out.
Coming back from a few days break I entered a 100,000 buy-in tournament and won very easily with scarcely a problem, except with this hand (shown below) in which I lost a large part of my stack.
In general I seized the lead early on and held it for a long time, then coming onto the final table I lost a big pot, but I hanged in there and picked them off one at a time, and then destroyed the sole survivor.
I think I had a good run of cards. In the early going I had KK three times and won each of those pots. Here is one where I picked off a bluff by a very loose player.
Here is the hand that nearly sunk me on the final table. How would you have played it?
In general the quality of play was poor. What did my opponent have on this hand, where he called my bets down to the river and called on the river, and still could not beat a lowly pair of 5s? He could not have had an ace high hand either. Maybe he had a pocket pair of 4’s