Rapid Tournament Exits

Sometimes its amazing how quickly your fortune can change in a tournament. I was playing the 50-50 on FullTilt tonight and doing ok, when all of the sudden I blink and I'm out. There wasn't any gradual decline, or "I'm going to have to make a move soon" orbit or two, just one second I was playing and the next I'm writing a blog post.

Things started out well for me. We started with $T2000 chips and after a round or two of blinds I was close to 4K. I was expecting better play out of a higher buy in tourney, but I can't say that I noticed any.

Unfortunetely 4K was about my high water mark. I hovered there for a good hour and a half, winning some small pots, losing a few small pots, but never really getting involved in a big hand. We were down to about 350 of the original 970 when my chipstack was first in danger of going below the starting point of 2K, but my opponent folded to my bluff, and I was still in business.

By this point I was in the lower third of the field but still not feeling any real pressure. I had TJo in the BB. The uber big stack who had just been moved to the table made a medium/small sized raise, and was called by two players, but one of them couldn't even cover the blinds so I don't know that he counts.

The flop was Jack high so I lead out. Uber stack pushes all in and the other guy folds. It feels like a big stack trying to bully me, but I'm not willing to risk my tournament life on it so I fold. He turns over QQ and I breathe I sigh of relief as I nearly called. I then start cursing at my computer as a third jack comes on the river,but what can you do? I think I made the right call. The next hand I have A7 and I'm now in pretty bad shape. There's a standard raise ahead of me and I try to steal it by pushing all-in. He has AK and you know how this ends.

So there it was. Two hands and I go from somewhat short stacked but comfortable to out.

Which once again makes me question whether these tournaments are worth it. You almost have to make the final table to justify the time expense versus just playing a normal SNG. In the time it took me to win nothing in this tournament I could have played 2 SNGs, and if I had lasted as long as I did in this tournament I'd be ahead monetarily. The real difference maker is if you actually do make a final table or manage to win one. Do that and you are practically freerolling all your tournaments for the rest of the year.

So I don't play a lot of MTT, largely because I don't have the time, but partially because its way too frustrating to play well for hours with nothing to show. I'll probably still take shots at big tourney's on occasion, but I'm fairly certain that being a SNG specialist is how I'll operate for quite a while.

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com