I play on Full Tilt, and yesterday I received an email from them inviting me to join a closed-invitation freeroll tournament that was scheduled for today. I had the afternoon off, so I figured what the hell, why not give it a try?
The tournament filled up to 1003 players at kick-off and was going to pay 360 of them, which seemed pretty decent. The payout, however, was highly exponential. Finishing in 180 to 360th place paid just $3, 90-179th paid $3.5, and so on, all the way up to first place, which paid $230. It promised to be an interesting game. My goal was to play solid poker early, try to increase my chip stack at a slow but steady pace, and make the money. At that point, I would open it up and just see what I could do.
Incredibly, within 1 minute of starting we were down to 950 players. In other words, at least 53 players decided to push all-in on their very first hand of the tournament, and at least 53 other players decided to call them. Wow. I guess some people had a very different strategy than I did. About half of them doubled up, and half went home. In a free roll, I can understand how you might want to play this way, but it's not for me. I wanted to make the money on skill, not luck, so a coinflip on hand numero uno wasn't in the cards for me.
Anyway, as per plan, I played a very tight game, with a VPIP of only 10% after 40 hands (I was basically card dead for nearly the first entire hour). When I did get involved in a pot, I never risked all my chips (per Debbie Blair's advice), but I was pretty aggressive. I put in pot-sized raises whenever I got involved, and mostly I got respect and judicious laydowns from the opp. Playing this way, I built my stack up to T4000 and mostly hung around at that level while the field slowly but surely whittled itself down.
When we got down to 440 players, I suffered a bad beat when I picked up AK on the button, called a pot-sized raise with it, flopped A-K-x, and called an all-in from a guy I figured had a middle to medium pair. He in fact did have QQ, but he also hit runner-runner hearts to sink me down to T195. Ouch. No, let me rephrase that: OUCH!
The good news is that I pushed all-in with my next hand (the blinds were 100/200 and coming around quick) and got paid off. In the hand, I got two callers and hit a miracle straight on the river to triple up. I pushed on the very next hand, too, and picked up the blinds and one limper's bet. I was still short stack at the table with T1300 or so, but there were lots of guys at other tables with much shorter stacks than me. I could coast into the money if I simply played turtle man and folded everything that came my way. This decision was a no-brainer for me at this point, because there were dozens of players with between T20 and T500 and the player count was down to 390 or so. I just had to outlast 30 players and I was freerolling into the dough. There wasn't much hope of me placing very high anymore, so my goal was simply to "take the hill" and then see what happens next.
The amazing thing to me at this point was the number of medium stacks who were willing to mix it up with only so-so hands and risk their tournament lives just outside of the bubble. For instance, there was a guy at my table with T1400, which was only slightly higher than my stack but certainly capable of making it to the money. With the player count at 370, he pushed all-in UTG with AQo. One of the big stacks called him with 44 (!) and busted this yahoo out of the tourney, nearly two hours into the game and just 10 seats from the money-- and with 20 or so players way down around T100 in chips. Can you say stupid? The only explanation I could come up with was that this guy wasn't paying attention to the bubble and/or where he stood relative to everyone else's stack sizes. Amazing.
Anyway, I made the money and then, with an M of just 4, decided to push with the first halfway playable hand I picked up. I committed hari-kari with a pair of fives, got two callers, and busted out in 340th place.
One of the guru's commandments is Thou Shall Pay Attention, which I normally take to mean: pay attention to the opp's VPIP and aggressiveness, the flop texture, the overall table texture, and the opp's stack sizes. But in a tourney like the one I just played in, it also means pay attention to where the bubble is, and how close you are to squeaking into the money. The yahoo at my table who busted out in 370th place clearly forgot (or never learned) this piece of advice.
All-in for now...
-Bug
No comments:
Post a Comment