Step 5 not that hard

[betgo]

I won an entry into a 2-table Step 5 fairly easily. I was wondering what the play was like. I figured at $1000 buyin there would be a high percentage of pros and some top pros I might have seem on TV.

There wasn't a lot of bad play to take advantage of, but there also didn't seem to be a lot of opportunity to get into trouble if you more or less knew what you were doing.

The early play was pretty tight. You didn't get a lot of loose action, but it was fairly easy to pick up a pot with a bet.

There were a few weak players. An early position player raised 3xBB to 120. A mid position player went allin for 800. The player to his immediate left called. The player going allin had 88 and the caller had KK. That move might work a lot of times, but it seems EV-.

Once the blinds got to 50/100, a lot players were getting knocked out. With 4 of 20 places paying there was no point in playing supertight.

I wound up a smaller stack with about my original chips in push fold mode. The same thing happened to me in Saturday's Party Poker Million. I am pretty comfortable playing that way. It's all the math of what hands you can push with in what position, as well as playing position, players, and the table.

With the blinds 75/150, I pushed from the button with T850 and AQo. I got called by the BB with T950 and A4s. This was actually a good call, as he was getting 3-2 pot odds, but was less than a 3-2 dog against the range of hands I was likely to have, and he needed to double up. Anyway, he won the hand with trip 4s and I finished 10th. If I had won this hand, I would probably have cashed.

It seemed pretty easy to stay even until push/fold mode. I am not looking to have a big EV+ on these things, since I am not buying in directly, but I would like to make it fairly break even.