Friday, July 29, 2005

July Tournament Play

The month of July has been a good one for me. Tournaments were especially encouraging. I played 7 live tournaments and was in the money three times with three final table appearances.

While Connie and I were in Vegas I played in 4 tournaments. Three were low buy in tournaments at the Gold Coast but in the last one I got 5th for 4 times my buy in. The fourth one in Vegas was the single WSOP super satellite I played. I wish now I'd started earlier and played more of them. I was intimidated by the prospect at the time. After finishing in the top 1/3 of the field while doing no rebuys and no addons I feel much better about my prospects for next year.

In Gulfport last week I played three tournaments. The Monday NL rebuy tourney, the Wednesday Limit rebuy and the Thursday NL freezeout.

On Monday I once again never did a rebuy and didn't do the add on. I made the final table very short stacked but managed to finish 8th. I got $270 for my efforts with a total investment of $15, not bad at all I don't think. It was amazing really, there were 95 entries, 310 rebuys and 68 add ons. One guy at the first table I was on must have rebought 10 times. Now you know why I didn't have to, I just kept taking his chips :)

Wednesday's tourney was something I tried because of my success in Vegas and on Monday. I really do NOT like rebuy tournaments and HATE limit tournaments. I figured I have to learn somehow though so I gave it a shot. I even did one rebuy since you got twice the starting chips for a rebuy. It didn't help though and I was out before the break as I determined it was just not worth another rebuy. I'm going to have to read up on Limit tourneys and log some simulator time I guess. I could just skip them but I have a feeling learning to play them could be beneficial to my game. I don't see how it can hurt.

Thursday I was actually late picking Connie up at the airport because I made the final table in the $60 NL freezeout tourney.  I was actually in decent chip position when I made the final table, probably around 5th as near as I could tell. It went up and down with them discussing and turning down deals. A couple of hands hurt me and I finally ended up out in 8th. I got $242 for that one. Naturally they chopped right after that and if I'd held on and let somebody ELSE go out first I'd have been $400 or so richer. Such is life.

Back here in Orlando I played some online tourneys this week. It wasn't going well at all. I barely made the top half of the field in anything early this week. Then one night I helped Connie win one of Poker Stars $1+.20 45 seat sit and go's. She is really pretty good at the early to middle stages of tourneys and I learn a lot from her patience in that phase. I hope she is learning from my aggression in the late middle to late stages though. She likes to just sit back and I find that doesn't work, you need to be attacking, constantly keeping pressure on your opponents. Sure sometimes I get beat that way but I am finishing higher and higher and have won many low buy in tourneys that way.

I played a $20+$2 tourney on UB a few minutes ago. There were 154 entries and I was finally out in 15th getting $30.80 for my efforts. LOL it only amounted to about $3 an hour profit but at least it WAS profit. I felt I played well which is good as early in the week I definately did NOT think I was playing well and it felt like I was being outplayed constantly. I see now that it was mostly me trying to make bad cards work for me. I was very card dead and was not as patient as I maybe could have been.

As much as I hate to admit it I think I may be starting to like tournament play as much and possibly (just possibly) more than cash games. I do like just sitting down to a live cash game though. I can be totally relaxed and enjoy the setting and the people. In the places I usually go and the games I usually play I now feel totally at ease which is cool. I like knowing that if I just play my game I can count on making at least SOME money by the end of the night. I did it again last night in Melbourne. It started out rocky as there was a total maniac on the table raising in the dark but he ran out of money and left. My main regret there is that I never got a hand that would get me any of his money :) I caught some good hands later and also out played a couple people for pots and was up around $22 when I left. Not much but 11 big bets in just a couple hours is not too bad either. It's not gonna make me rich but it was great entertainment.

I'll be heading back to Vegas on August 13. My plan is to play a lot of poker of course. I'll try to do at least one tournament a day for the week I'm there and fill the rest of the time with cash games, probably $2/$4 and $4/$8 at the Gold Coast and $3/$6 at MGM primarily. I may hop around and try out a few other poker rooms too, we'll have to see on that. I'll be hopping around to get in a tournament a day anyway as I'm going to aim for buy in's around $60 each day.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You are doing SO GREAT at tournaments. I'm tickled pink. But it is funny that you are liking tournaments and I'm actually doing better at cash games since we both started off liking the other better.

I think I am learning that you need to be more  aggressive in the later rounds of tournaments, now if I could just DO it.