Tourney Success!
BB’s to go: 163.25 or $6.53
PokerStars Tournament #22380064, No Limit Hold'emBuy-In: $1.00/$0.101554 playersTotal Prize Pool: $1554.00 Tournament started - 2006/04/06 - 21:02:00 (ET) Dear bluto392, You finished the tournament in 23rd place.A $4.67 award has been credited to your Real Money account.
That was a lot of work for $3.67. Considering my general lack of skill at NL and tournaments, I’m quite pleased with myself.
I was in the zone. Most times I play a tournament format I feel like I’m fumbling in the dark, and generally clueless. This time I felt like I could ‘see’ under the surface of the game and look at how it worked.
It was mostly a blur, but I was tight, patient, and aggressive. I saw only about 25 percent of the flops and won around sixty percent of the time I saw a flop.
I started out not doing so well and fell into a fold or push strategy. For once, this small stack judo felt comfortable. And it paid off. I hit with big hands two or three times, then people began folding blinds to me.
Once I’d built myself back to about 20 BB’s I ramped up the aggression a bit. I went on a rush of cards, and got lucky enough to suck out a few times.
Before I know it, (okay, three hours later) I’m playing within a range of 80-100k chips and was even the chip leader for a bit. I get moved to a new table, which I just put a hammer-lock on. Again, I’m lucky to get some premium hands, bet hard and win, then proceed to muscle people off pots.
Unfortunately, a few things then happened. First, a player just moved to my table went on a rush herself and slapped me down a few times. Soon I was in the middle of the pack stack-wise, and I’d lost my advantage. Near the end she had a quarter million chips and was the 500 pound gorilla in the room.
Secondly, I was too damn tired! It was 1am, we were losing only one person every ten minutes, and I was having trouble keeping my eyes open. Plus, the payouts were so small until the top five places or so, and I just couldn’t imagine how long that was going to take. Would it be worth it to get an hour or two of sleep to go out in fourth and win twenty bucks? Even the top prize of around $250, although enticing, wasn’t good enough to risk having to take a half day off work to get some sleep. (I’ve been up late all week, and I will reach a point where I can’t safely drive the hour commute to work if I don’t get at least five hours on a consistent basis.)
I guess I had the option of just sitting out and folding into a better spot. I know that’s not against the rules, but it just doesn’t seem right to me, for some reason. At any rate, I busted out around one-fifteen and I’m paying for it today. (As I’m sure my crappy writing is demonstrating.)
This was strictly a bonus for me. I’m not going to play any tournaments until I have the desire to spend time studying and practicing that type of game. It’s still a –EV proposition to play in SNG’s and MTT’s. However, I imagine I’m not going to be able to resist playing in the cheapest 45 seat SNG tonight. Busting out in 21st place will cure me of that jones. Anyway, there’s always the 10 cent turbos!
My only goal for what tournament ‘roll I have is to have enough to play in a blogger tourney once in a while without fretting over going broke.
PokerStars Tournament #22380064, No Limit Hold'emBuy-In: $1.00/$0.101554 playersTotal Prize Pool: $1554.00 Tournament started - 2006/04/06 - 21:02:00 (ET) Dear bluto392, You finished the tournament in 23rd place.A $4.67 award has been credited to your Real Money account.
That was a lot of work for $3.67. Considering my general lack of skill at NL and tournaments, I’m quite pleased with myself.
I was in the zone. Most times I play a tournament format I feel like I’m fumbling in the dark, and generally clueless. This time I felt like I could ‘see’ under the surface of the game and look at how it worked.
It was mostly a blur, but I was tight, patient, and aggressive. I saw only about 25 percent of the flops and won around sixty percent of the time I saw a flop.
I started out not doing so well and fell into a fold or push strategy. For once, this small stack judo felt comfortable. And it paid off. I hit with big hands two or three times, then people began folding blinds to me.
Once I’d built myself back to about 20 BB’s I ramped up the aggression a bit. I went on a rush of cards, and got lucky enough to suck out a few times.
Before I know it, (okay, three hours later) I’m playing within a range of 80-100k chips and was even the chip leader for a bit. I get moved to a new table, which I just put a hammer-lock on. Again, I’m lucky to get some premium hands, bet hard and win, then proceed to muscle people off pots.
Unfortunately, a few things then happened. First, a player just moved to my table went on a rush herself and slapped me down a few times. Soon I was in the middle of the pack stack-wise, and I’d lost my advantage. Near the end she had a quarter million chips and was the 500 pound gorilla in the room.
Secondly, I was too damn tired! It was 1am, we were losing only one person every ten minutes, and I was having trouble keeping my eyes open. Plus, the payouts were so small until the top five places or so, and I just couldn’t imagine how long that was going to take. Would it be worth it to get an hour or two of sleep to go out in fourth and win twenty bucks? Even the top prize of around $250, although enticing, wasn’t good enough to risk having to take a half day off work to get some sleep. (I’ve been up late all week, and I will reach a point where I can’t safely drive the hour commute to work if I don’t get at least five hours on a consistent basis.)
I guess I had the option of just sitting out and folding into a better spot. I know that’s not against the rules, but it just doesn’t seem right to me, for some reason. At any rate, I busted out around one-fifteen and I’m paying for it today. (As I’m sure my crappy writing is demonstrating.)
This was strictly a bonus for me. I’m not going to play any tournaments until I have the desire to spend time studying and practicing that type of game. It’s still a –EV proposition to play in SNG’s and MTT’s. However, I imagine I’m not going to be able to resist playing in the cheapest 45 seat SNG tonight. Busting out in 21st place will cure me of that jones. Anyway, there’s always the 10 cent turbos!
My only goal for what tournament ‘roll I have is to have enough to play in a blogger tourney once in a while without fretting over going broke.
posted by C.L. Russo at 4/07/2006 06:54:00 AM
2 Comments:
Congrats, yo. Those small buy-in MTTs are usually full of push monkeys who'll crack your AA with 37o.
Playing those low buy-in MTTs or freerolls are a great way to hone your MTT skillz for when you put some actual money into it (although admittedly, I still turn into scared money when I pay more than $10 for a buy-in...stoopid brain).
Keep it up!
P
Thanks man!
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