That's what I was feeling last night when I went to bed at midnight, a full hour past my usual bed time. Missed it by that much...
Missed what? And why up so late, you ask?
Oh, nothing special. Just final-tabling a 360-person Rush tournament that ran a little long.
WOOO HOOO!
As a lark last night, I jumped into one of Full Tilt's $4.40 "On Demand" Rush Sit-n-Go tournaments. These are weird little beasts, with nominally just 45-person starting fields. The "On Demand" part, however, allows late registrations through level-5, above and beyond the 45-person limit. Usually these MTTs fill up to well over 200 entrants, and last night was no exception, with 350+ entrants showing up for most of the games that were played.
As I said, I jumped into one of these things around 7:30pm. The game made it all the way up to 355 players before registration closed, and then it went very quickly down to 50 players. Then things slowed down, and I nursed a short stack into the money, busting out in 33rd place, making just a few bucks for the hour-long effort. Now, on Full Tilt, when you bust out of tournament, there is usually a little window that pops up asking if you want to register for another similar tournament. I hit "NO" on auto-pilot, but then immediately reconsidered. My wife was engrossed in a book, and I had another couple of hours free to play. So, what the heck?
I moused my way back to the lobby and was getting ready to enter another 45-man that was just forming when I saw one of the previous "45" man games was still allowing late registration. They were at level four and 200+ players already, so I registered into that game, receiving 2000 tournament chips and getting assigned a seat and cards immediately. The average stack at that point in the tournament was only something like T3000 and the blinds were still relatively low, so I didn't feel like I was at a huge disadvantage registering late. About five minutes later, the registration closed and we had 360 players seated for the remainder of the game.
To make a long story short, I made the money around 10pm, and then proceeded to just keep hanging on, bobbing and weaving, while, one-by-one, other players got eliminated. About an hour later, I made it to the final table, alternating between a very aggressive game at times, and a very cautious one at other times. At one point at the final table, for example, I laid down AKo when there was a big raise in front of me by the big stack at the table, and I knew that a short stack behind me was going to call with ATC (any two cards). The jumps in payout levels made this type of play feel prudent at the time. (Note: If we were still outside the payout bubble, or even in the money, but not very deep, calling the shove with AK would have been a no-brainer.) I also folded 22, 44, and 55 at the final table in EP when it was clear that other players were getting much more desperate than me.
I won't bore with all the gory details, but in the end I busted out in second place, after getting heads-up with a player from Tunisia who had me out-chipped 4:1 going into the battle. I hung in there for a while, but eventually had to get it in with a suited big King against his Ace-rag. The board bricked out and I was left with the runner-up's consolation prize of $220. Missed it by that much! (Sigh, yes, but on the other hand: Can you say ROI!?)
One thing to note is that I tried something strategically a little different in this second game that I think helped me get deep. In the first tournament, I just sort played my normal cash game strategy, playing strong hands when I had them, and folding weak hands when I didn't. Simple, straightforward.... and most definitely not the way to give yourself the best chance to win a poker tournament.
In contrast, in the second game, I decided to take Matt Matros' advice from his book "The Making of a Poker Player" to heart. In his book, Matros says that you have to be cautious in the beginning of an MTT, but you also have to constantly accumulate chips. You have to take small, measured chances, and if you bust out, well, you bust out. Unlike a single-table SnG, just making the money in a MTT shouldn't be the goal. Instead, the aim should be to make the final table with chips to splash around. Or, as poker author Max Stern says, "In order to survive [in a MTT], you must be willing to die."
In any case, I took this advice to heart in the second game. I played a relatively cautious, ABC-style game early on, but I also took a few more chances that I normally do, re-stealing big from the blinds a few times against what looked to be obvious LP steal attempts, and attacking short-stacked and/or tight-passive blinds whenever I could.
Further, when we were getting close to the bubble, I really opened up my game, especially against the short stacks. It's at this point in a tournament when you can shift gears into high and take advantage of all of the bubble boys and girls who are battening down the hatches and just trying to squeak into the money. During this period, I went from T14K to T51K in about ten minutes, despite a run of really bad cards.
Once the bubble burst, however, I tightened WAAAAY up again, letting a full third of the field with short stacks quickly die off. The bad news is that this distilled down the remaining players and increased the average chip stack size considerably. The good news, however, is that it moved me considerably up in the payout ladder structure.
Now, I couldn't stay in this lay-low mode very long before I had to re-open my game again. So, as we approached the final table, I again went into Chip Accumulation mode, and ended up doubling my stack from something like T48K to T102K in about five minutes. Then, once we hit the final-nine, I shifted back into neutral, letting a couple of short stacks battle it out and get killed off. Again, the payout structure really dictates when you should take chances, and when it's prudent to let other people risk their tournament lives instead.
As the Guru is always preaching, you have to shift gears in MTTs. It's the old Fox and the Farmer poker story, where only a couple of steady-Eddie Farmers make it to a final table, while wily-Foxes routinely get there. Mr. Multi (when he was playing more regularly) had this constant gear change thing in MTTs down to an art form, starting slow and cautiously at first, but then gradually opening up his game more and more as the blinds increased. His ITM and ROI in low dollar MTTs were both relatively high as a result. The name of the game is to pick spots, attack, and shift gears. You have to be willing to die if you want to live...
Anyway, enough rambling and crowing about my second place finish. You'll have to excuse me-- I'm still floating on cloud nine, and just had to tell someone this morning.
No comments:
Post a Comment