Won the Bike tourney on 3rd attempt

So my brother and I went on another visit to The Bicycle casino in LA today - this was my third attempt to win the noon tournament.  I hate dealing with the traffic driving to and from the casino but I really like the tourney itself with a decent starting stack (4000) and structure (start at 25/25 and 20 min levels and slow increments) and although the rake is high ($30+$10) they get anywhere from 150 to 200 entries so there is plenty of play. In fact its probably the best value tournament in LA.

My first attempt to win this tourney (several weeks back) ended when I ran my set of queens into pocket aces and an ace hit on the river. The second attempt earlier this week ended when I went card-dead and anted down to about 8 big blinds and then lost a survival race. Today went much better. I chipped up early hitting a few decent cards and winning a big pot with quad 2s. Then I just stole blinds and slowly chipped up during the tournament without ever really putting myself in danger of being knocked out. With about 30 people left I was getting short but they paid 27 places so a little rally right around the bubble got me back to 15BB and then I got into a big pot with AA and it held up so I was one of the chip leaders with 27 left.

As ever it was quite quick for the short stacks to explode after the bubble and I eliminated a couple of players in straightforward races (A-9s v 8-8, AQ v KQ etc) to get to the final table. The only excitement was when there were 10 players left and we were all trying to get on a 9-person final table. One guy on the other table had one 1K chip left and I knew this. I had about 45k in chips on my table and got dealt A-7. We were 5 handed and I pushed all in. Fortunately the 4 other guys on my table all folded and I survived. There was a nice bump in money heading to the 9 spots on the final table.

So I started the final table with about 65,000 chips. This was about 5th place in chips. Nothing too special happened as I waited for people to eliminate each other and stole a couple of blinds. I did not get too many cards so I just sat out until 5 people were left and we then agreed a chop.

A nice end to the work week.