Posted by Johnnymac 10:35 PM
The Lucrative Waring Poker Tour!
Junell's tournament was today. I don't know who won, or even if it's over yet (it probably is by now), but I have to give Mark props - it was a great event. It was very well run and quite a lucrative event - unlimited rebuys and and add-on with this crowd of drunken rich boys was like throwing a baggie of crack into condemened house in the 5th Ward. There was a lot of money in this event and it made the tournament worthwhile, unlike any tournament I have ever played in before. Although there were just 60 players entered at $100 apiece, the total prize pool ended up being around $13000 with just over $5000 for the winner. This was quite a an event, indeed!

As any of the readers here know already, in the weeks before today Fro had been discussing his adjustments to the rebuy structure, and I agreed with him with him that the rebuy structure allowed for slightly more aggressive play because of the safety net it provided. But after today I have to say that this particular tournament was so loose and lucrative that neither Fro nor I were prepared to loosen up as much as this tournament probably required. Unlimited increments of $60 gave good players the opportunity to stay in the game against very loose and bad players and with a little bit of help from the cards, any lost chips could quickly be made up against in most cases. My table had some very loose players and a lot of rebuys - I only rebought one time before the break (I did again after the break), but I would have likely done it 2 or 3 times if I had needed to. Canonico proved in the last tournament that building a big stack is the best way to win a NLH tournament and today's structure could have yielded, and did yield, some enormous stacks to a few players.

Another observation is that most of the loose players who kept pumping money into the pot were eliminated very shortly after the break once the safety net went away and then very quickly thereafter only mostly good players were left to fight for the quite large pot of prize money. I started after the break with only $1250 and was able to build my stack to almost $10000 and spitting distance of the chip lead before the cards started running cold again. This structure lent a definite advantage and a financial opportunity to good players willing to spend a little bit of money if circumstances warranted and patiently wait until the break and the start of the "real" tournament.

I don't have many other things to say here. As far as my game went, I didn't get dealt many good hands to play for the first couple of hours, but after the break I started getting cards and, like I said, I managed to build a nice stack for a short time. One one hand I slowplayed a set of 8's and knocked out a guy at one point and on another big hand I flopped an open ended straight draw with my JT and luckily got a couple of cheap draws to hit my straight on the river and eliminate yet another player. After that hand though, the blinds went up and I started getting bled to death with missed draws and blinds. Eventually I got down to $2500 and looked down to see JJ from the cutoff seat. The big blind at this point was $400 to call, so I figured this was as good a time as any to take a shot. I went all in and got called immediately out of the big blind by a new player at the end of the table. While he as counting his chips I figured I was up against an overcard or two, but then he showed me AA. I didn't get any help from the board and I was out the door.

John Feeney says that a truly skilled poker player will eventually quit keeping score with money because he knows that his long run expectation is positive. Instead, he says that "doing well" is better defined as being able to stay disciplined and make proper plays at all times while minimizing mistakes and mental breakdowns. I feel like I did this today and played well - no bad calls and enough courage to take shots when opportunites presented themselves - and I am happy with the results. No, I didn't win, but unlike my recent tournament experiences that I've chronicled here, I have no complaints this time: I didn't get beat by any idiots, I didn't beat myself, and the lucre of this particular tournament was such that I feel that playing was definitely worth my while this afternoon. I might not have been lucky with my JJ, but hey, that's just poker.

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