M.E. Update

I've been very careful in this tournament so far. First I folded AK before the flop which I almost never do. Under the gun make it 180, got one caller and I made it 780 from the button. UTG quickly made it 2,000 and it just looked like a big pair. In a smaller tournament I would have called, but it was too early in this marathon to get involved with a player who I know has a very big hand.

Second I flopped an ace with AJ and when I bet the flop and got called I checked the turn and the river. I thought it was possible my opponent smooth called my preflop raise with AK or AQ and was waiting to pop me on the turn. After he checked the turn I figured he had a hand that either couldn't call a bet on the river (so why bet?) like a missed draw or had a monster. Also if he had nothing I thought he might bet as a bluff which I could then snap off.

Third, I just called a raise with AJs preflop and when the flop came AQ2 I called my opponent's flop bet and folded to his pot sized turn bet when a K showed up.

I got a little less careful with AQs. I was on the button and the cutoff made it 270 with blinds of 50/100 and a 10 chip ante. I popped him to 800 and he made it 2,070. I could have folded here, but I thought it was a good time to take a flop in position. The flop came down A 8 4 and after a hesitation my opponent bet out 2,680 into the 4,400 pot. This all screamed a hand like KK or JJ, so I made it 6,500 with plans of folding to an all in which would have left me with 9,000. Instead my opponent folded and I took down a nice pot. That one took me from 18K or so to about 23K.

Just gave back a few grand so now I'm at 20,600 after 180 hands and 2.5 hours.