One of my goals at the beginning of the year was to start playing tournaments more. Specifically, at least one $200+ buy-in per month. Well I filled that obligation tonight. I entered a winter open event at the Borgata and busted out in just 3 hours. Wasn't a big deal, cost about $180 to enter. Remembered why tournaments are such b.s most of the time. Really nothing I could do, didn't make any mistakes, but went bad.
The best hand I was dealt was AA once, which was dealt on literally the first hand of the tournament. There were only 5 people at the table at that time, took down a small pot. A big situation came up later when my stack was about 12-14 BBs. Just a big enough stack where I didn't want to go all in pre, but pretty much only had enough for a PRE raise and one move on the flop. So I'm dealt QQ UTG, raised 4x or so preflop. The guy of course calls, and heads-up flops the ACE holding AK. The same idiot talking about how he won an event early, I can't even imagine someone this bad winning a tournament. I saw him make some pretty big mistakes in just watching him 50 hands or so. Action is on me with QQ heads-up with the atocious flop:
A, 8, 3 (I believe)
Anyways, here I priced it so I could fold if he raised on the ace flop, which I did. I figured any sort of resistance against my C-bet and he has the ace. I raised just under half the pot, he raises of course, I fold, and he showed the AK. I know luck-box, but thanks for the show. At this point I only have about 5-6 BB's left and it's red-zone.
Eventually I shove the remaining 3,500 in chips (just over 4 BBs left) with 66 MP. I run into KK like usual. No help on the flop, turn or river. Christ you think I could at least find a coin-flip situation there.
I had fun though, it was a good experience. The play was a little worse than I expected. Location wise, I had a great seat despite getting no playable hands in any sort of meaningful situation. There was a drunk MEGA-DROOLER to my immediate right, he even doubled up. I just couldn't get one hand against this guy. He eventually stacked off holding T7s on a J, J, 7 board. Yeah the other dude had AJ or whatever.
I think there is a lot of value in touranments like these and I should keep them in my schedule at least once per month. Then again any tournament like this is 30%+ luck no matter what you do, so when I enter something like this losing the buy-in can't mean anything, which it didn't.
Tournaments need to be kept at a minimum though. I consider myself one of the more unlucky people on the planet, so how the hell am I going to cash in a tournament when there is 30%+ luck no matter what? I need money in with my opponent's down to two outs, and even then I expect to lose.
That's all for now. Off to make dinner and put in some online volume later, maybe 3-6 hours. The poker room at the Borgata is insane. NINE 2-5 games going on a Monday night, eleven 1-2. Pretty mind-blown. Some of the 2-5's looked very crazy and deep stacked. There's a duplicate event tomorrow, but I think I'll pass. Wasn't really trying to dump $400 on tournaments this week, but $180 was scheduled.
-bag