Fun at the emporium

I went in with my buddy Al to the sporting emporium last night for their weekly Sunday tournament. I like this game as it starts nice and early at 7.30, has a cheap buy in and usually gets four or five tables. We met beforehand for a quick pint in Kehoes, then strolled over. The tourney was halfway through the first level with three full tables running, so they opened up a fourth and myself and Al ended up sitting right beside each other with Al to my left. Bummer. Al knows my game inside out, so the last place I want him is exactly where he is, thankfully we're only there to have a bit of craic. I fold the first five hands, but notice the guy to my right has limp called OOP four of these, check folded flop on three, and one hand he got to the river and folded to a 1/4 pot bet, in short, he's bad. Anyway he limps UTG with 3.5k behind, I raise to 200 (25/50) with QQ (5k), button (5k) calls and UTG 3-bets to 600! Mmmmm, anytime I've seen a bad player limp raise from UTG it's QQ+, and I've seen it a lot, but I'm never folding here. I just call the 400, and button calls too (this guy will have anything here, KJ=monster merchant). The flop comes 10 high, and UTG confidently fires out 1k, I figure I'm toast way too often here, put it down to a cooler and fold. I nag him to show, and he turns over KK. Obv happy with my read, but I was thinking afterwards that I played it badly preflop, and I should've just shipped it to the 3-bet given how shallow we were, flat calling it multiway wasn't optimal and folding would just be ghey. The next hand I played lost me a chunk. MP opens for 350 (50/100), villain from previous hand flat calls, I'm on the button and figure this is a super standard squeez spot, I've played with OR before and he's pretty weak, therefore won't recognise what I'm doing. Although it's a very profitable play, the problem with doing it shallow stacked is, there's not much room for it to backfire lol. But hey, I can't resist, so I make it 1150 with 10 3. OR folds as expected but the other dude calls. Shit. Flop is 10 J Q rainbow, he takes an age then eventually checks. I bet 1100, leaving 2k behind. It's a small bet but he folded earlier to a ridic small bet, plus, it just enough to not commit me, also I don't want to check in case he bluff shoves the turn. To my disgust he calls the 1100. I'm done now. Another Q on the turn and he checks, I check behind. J on the river and he insta-shoves. Uggh. He told me later he had AQ. Nothing much of note after that, I picked up AA twice and didn't get paid, so it was one of those nights. My exit hand was funny though, I'm in the SB with J9 and Al is BB. It's folded to button who just arrived at the table with a monster stack, I've played with him once before and from what I remember his opening range is pretty nitty, but that didn't stop me shoving when he opened his button lol. There was a third of my stack in there, and surely even the nittiest of nits opens the button wide now and then, especially with a healthy tank. So I ship it, but Al insta ships behind me 'OH OH', then the button almost knocks the table over getting his chips in! He flips KK, Al has 88 and I slowroll them with the J9 lol. Flop is J 10 4, wahoo there's hope, BOOM 9 on the turn, 'Yay, triple up, just have to dodge 15 cards', but a justified 4 on the river gives the pot to the KK. 'BOO' :( That was a fun hand, a good way to go broke so to speak. It's a fun tournament and not one to be taken too seriously, but it's still a half decent cash for first (I won it recently for €800), and it finishes up relatively early. My next outing will probably be Lukes game on Friday, it's a wonderfully structured game, and by far the best regular Dublin tournament.