Won a weekly B&M tourney in Houston

[scarr]

I just found out there are weekly Holdem Tournaments in Houston, Texas. I went to my first one on Saturday and actually won the thing! There were 100 people in this $20 rebuy event.

Gambling is illegal in Texas, and we have no card rooms like in California. These tourneys in Texas are run at local pubs on pool tables, they play right on the felt. All of the money goes back to the players, the dealers work for tips. This is what makes it legal. Of course the pub only gets money off of drinks.

Reading posts here was a good part of the reason I won it. Thanks to everyone for your excellent advice on MTTs!

Regarding the tournament itself, I'll just summarize the 6 hour tourney like this. I don't think I ever had more than 10xBB in chips, best hand I won with was when I called an all-in raise with 10000 from the BB when the blinds were 30000 to put me all-in with T6s. I got trip 6s and that was the best hand I had the whole tourney. Everything else won with a pair or no showdown.

As you can see, the blind structure was horrible. I think I maintained an average stack thoughout (and never more than 10xBB). Playing super tight aggressive and having a long term view helped me.

I looked around the room, counted tables, looked at stack size relative to BB. Computing stack size relative to BB was not easy in B&M tourneys. I got lucky on the end when we were heads up. I had a bigger stack going in heads up (no more than 6xBB total in both our stack) and asked if he wanted to chop, he said no and wanted to win it. Looked like what was going to transpire at this point was going to be based only on the cards. No room to trap, bluff or anything, just cards. I folded a couple of SBs but the rest of the hands heads up had one of us all-in, and all of the cards on the table. I don't know what the final hand was but I am sure it was something rediculous like a pair of 4s.

Thanks again for all the great advice here.