Early, Early Bird

Hello Everyone,
This is my first post about poker, so bear with me. I started a weekly poker night at the University of British Columbia within the Physics and Astronomy department. It's been going really well and I hope it continues to do so. However, one night a week was not enough to satisfy my felt-lust, so I started entering the Early Bird Tournaments at the River Rock Casino. A $23 entry fee gets you $1000 worth of chips but you have the option of paying an additional $5 when you sit down to get another $500, which I don't think anyone forgoes. Furthermore, registration starts at 8:00 am and the tourny doesn't begin until 10:00, so the casino wants you to spend money while you wait I guess.

Anyways, my first venture met with dissapointment as the bus was late and I got there at 7:45 am, much too late as the line up was HUGE and they cap the tournament at 60 players.

The following Sunday, last week, two of Monday night's players came along with me: Kory and Simon. I didn't do particularly well, going out right before the first break after an hour or so. Simon lasted an additional half hour and Kory, being the bruiser that he is went for 2 hours total.

I should stop for a moment and give you the breakdown for prizes:
1st: $600
2nd: $240
3rd: $180
4th: $120
5th: $60

Thus I was VERY happy that today, October 30th, 2005 I CAME IN FREAKING FOURTH!!!!! WOO HOO!!! YAY ME!!! I also put out two people at the final table. However, I think I could have done better if I hadn't made two mistakes:
1. getting pocket aces and telling the big blind that I'll put him all in, instead of making a small raise to sucker him in.
2. raising on a pure bluff with J2 off-suit. This was dumb I'll be the first to admit it. I didn't consider how I was being perceived by the remaining 3 players. I was raising quite alot, so eventually one of them was going to call me with any decent hand. I should have quit that tactic when I was ahead.

The next hand after mistake number 2, I got A4 off-suit and went all in again. I got called but he had AA so that was the end of me.

As a side note, the reason this post is called, "Early, Early Bird, is because I showed up TWO HOURS early. I woke up at 2:30 and realized that people might not have remembered to set their clocks back the night prior, so they'd start showing up at 6ish thinking it was 7. Sure enough, 6:10 rolls around and the first people start coming in. There was a decent crowd by 7:00, so I'm glad I did what I did.

Now if only my luck holds out tomorrow night...