The Tournament Streak Continues

Mom always used to say that if you can’t say anything nice about someone, don’t say anything at all. Luckily for me, she never said anything about just walking up and punching them in the face. (Top5)

My buddy Zengy IM’d me yesterday afternoon and told me he was going to Hollywood Park to play in the $70 +$15 No Limit tournament. I drive by HP on the way home so I told him I might stop in to cheerlead and maybe get in some cash games. Well . . . I decided to play in the tournament.

The first round went pretty well. I took down some nice pots and at the first break I was sitting at around $3k. Just before the second break I went on a rush and took down one guy for $4k and entering into the third session I had about $15k. When we finally got to the final table, I was in second place with $18.5k in chips vs. the chip leader who had $20k. I felt good.

But maybe I shouldn’t have :-)

Actually, I had played VERY solid poker all night. Prior to the final table I won about 80% of the hands I saw a flop on. I came in with monsters, laid traps, and suckered my opponents into bluffing. I really was very happy with my play. The final table was a killer though. I won’t go into bad beat stories though because I don’t think I got any bad beats. I went heads up on a couple of hands that I certainly should have played and the odds were almost even.

First hand that put a dent in my stack was QQ UTG. I limped in trying to lure in one of the aggressive bigger stacks who might try to steal the pot. Sure enough UTG+1 pushes all-in. He’s done this with J9s and a bunch of other hands from EP so I’m not really sweating . . . yet. He flips up AJo (I think his second card was an jack. I forget but I know it was less than my Q). Flop brings a bunch of blanks, turn brings an ace and river is a blank. That was ding number 1.

Second hand was what all but put me out of the tournament. I had AKs. Another player who has gone all-in with beatable hands (99, TT, etc.) goes all-in in late position. I figure him on trying to steal and I push all in. He flips up pocket queens. Flop comes Qxx and I don’t improve on the turn or river. At this point I have less than a $1000 left so I just pushed all in on the next hand with J6s and went out in 8th place.

I took home a whopping $190 for 6 hours worth of play but I’m not unhappy. I really like how well I played. Considering that I’ve never even made it into the money playing multi table tournaments online or B&M before, winning a satellite into a WPT qualifier event and making the final table out of 127 players in one week has me a little pumped that my tournament play doesn’t necessarily suck. :-)

The one thing I noticed at the final table was how much the game shifts from skill to luck. Three of the players at the final table started with less than $5000 in chips. One was down to $2k. All three were not only still in when I left but had amassed a nice stack of chips by going all in and being called by a superior hand only to make a miracle card. There’s almost no hands that see a flop without one of the players being all-in so every hand has a huge stack of chips riding on it. Even the best hands can get sucked out with a flush or a straight so nothing is safe. Sometimes you’ll win and sometimes you’ll lose. If you happen to get lucky more often than not, you’ll do well at the final table.

I’ve noticed this on some of the televised tournaments too. One player is clearly playing superior poker over another but he keeps getting sucked out on. Pretty soon the short stack is the chip leader. Not because he played better poker but because he had nothing to lose. Sure, go all-in with J9s. Your opponent who has all the chips and pocket kings is a massive favorite but when the two nines come on the flop the entire game can change. In limit or in the early stages of a no-limit game you can get off a hand like that with minimal damage but at the final table when it’s all-in or nothing you can be a 90% favorite and still get beat.

One player who I busted out when he went all-in on me with pocket queens and I had pocket aces came up to me during one of the breaks and said “I played that hand poorly. You never play crap hands so when you raised me I should have known my queens were no good. I made a mistake going all in.” I responded by saying “Well, in no-limit, all it takes is one mistake. You can play like a pro for hours and get busted out in one hand.” I guess for me, it ended up being in two hands :-)

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