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June 27, 2004
Sunday, Bloody Sunday
I really seem to be having no luck in the Party Poker multi table tournaments lately. It does seem that almost every tournament I get knocked out of is due to either someone calling a huge amount preflop beaten or calling the huge amount preflop with a favorite that they still had no business calling due to the situation. You can't simply judge your tournament play by the final hands however, so this is not an indication of how much of my recent bad run is my fault.
Tournaments are so hard because the correct play is the one that gives you the most tournament equity, which is very hard to determine. A lot of very good players who I talk to often forget this fact, which means that pot odds are not your primary consideration and a lot of experienced ring game players never seem to be able to grasp this. In a way they are, it is just that since individual chips become devalued as you gain more of them (in terms of tournament expectation) and increase in value when you have less what appears to be 3:1 pot odds is actually substantially less.
The point of all this is that it is much harder to judge the quality of your own play in tournaments than in ring games, since there are so many more factors, some of which are hard to compute or entirely intangible. I do know that at my worst I am probably still a huge favorite in these Party tournaments, since very few people in them have the slightest clue what they are doing. The availability of satellites makes them akin to a $22 tournament, since that is how much 2/3 of the people in the paid to get in.
I just checked and for the year I am 6/28 in $215 tourneys on making the money, with one final table (4th) for a total profit of about $23k. I have done pretty well in other tournaments as well, so I am still up a good amount for the year. So I guess I shouldn’t be too disappointed in my performance, since I make the money about 21% of the time when only 10% of spots pay. What is more important is that whenever I make the money I seem to move at least half way up through it. This is easy to do on Party, since so many people play only to make the money. They stall for an hour or so before the money, and they fold hands where they should move all in just to squeak in, so whenever we do get in the money there are a bunch of short stacks who no longer care and proceed to move all in with anything. It takes an hour sometimes to get from 160th to 130th (the money in the Sunday tourneys) but to get from 130 to 100 takes 10 minutes.
So I think I will continue to play in these tournaments and try to work out a few kinks in my game. Just like ring games you always feel like you are doing everything wrong when you are on a bad streak (and everything right when you are on a good one) so I will try not to let that get to me, while still searching for ways to improve my play. I do feel as if my confidence has been shaken, but I will continue to plug away and try to win it (and some money) back.
Posted by themaroon at June 27, 2004 11:48 AM
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