Tournament Day
Jesus, tournament play is tough. After a reasonable first outing at NL single-table tournaments I figured the experience of playing a bunch of free rolls and the Sunday big-money games would be both educational and make a nice break from the low-limit grind. Yeah, right.
I got some sit and go practice in the morning, playing a whole bunch of single table £10+1 entry 6-table tournaments on SunPoker. Played 11, won three (£45 a pop), runner-up four times (£15 each) for a £74 profit, 68% return on investment. Easy. Except it’s not. There’s something about tournament play which turns my gut. Just too much stress, and man, I cope with stress badly.
Interpoker’s $10,000 free roll (2000MPP entry) started at 5.00 with 543 entrants. Two-and-a-half hours later I went out in 24th place, when, needing to double up in the next round or be blinded out of it, I called pre-flop UTG for 3000 of my 21,000 stack with Qjo with the blinds and antes adding up to 7500. One caller, and the small blind completed for a 15,000 pot. The small blind, the tournament chip bet out 6000 and I go all-in on a 9TJ rainbow flop. He called and flipped 8Jo, but turned a 7. I couldn’t catch an 8 or K or on the river so that was that. Time to calm down, call it a day and crawl into bed.
But. RakeTheRake had a $500 free roll for new accounts. I was all over the place and went out early. Ditto when I played a $66 satellite to Party’s $1m guaranteed immediately after. But, fuck it, the huggable one was away, nothing on the TV, and I already felt wasted and tired out and over-adrenalined and so I might as well blow all I’d won earlier by paying up the $215 entry fee and take a shot at the $155,000 prize. The prize pool pays down to 750th place for these things and only 4000 entrants and so might as well…. lose. I mean, I didn’t play that badly, but when I min-raised 66 under the gun I knew I was going out and just wanted it all to end. It did, in 1286th place.
Did I learn anything? Yes, I have sick addiction to gambling - one of those, I hate doing this, but want to do it anyway-types that just doesn‘t really happen in my usual limit play. Yes, I can play a reasonable No Limit tourny strategy and make some competent reads. Yes, I have to learn to deal with stressful situations better. And yes, I have to get back to fixed limit and grind my way through it.