The Perils of Tournament Poker

As I am writing this post, they are playing out the Main Event of the World Series of Poker at the Rio Hotel in Las Vegas. There are 37 players left, with nary a big name among them. All those guys like Hellmuth, Negreanu, Annie Duke, and all the rest are long gone. And, although I was in Vegas this weekend, my name is not there, either. I will have to wait at least one more year to get back to the WSOP.

I did manage to play in four tournaments this weekend, two each at the Sahara and the Stratosphere. It was not a good weekend for me, poker-wise, and it's all because of bad luck and bad beats. You see, you can have all the skills and poker knowledge in the world (not that I profess to have either), and it won't do a damn bit of good in a tournament if you don't have good luck and avoid bad beats.

Here's where the luck part comes in. Yesterday afternoon, I was playing in a tournament at the Stratosphere. 62 players started, and there were about 24 left. They were paying only the top six positions, and there was a way to go. So far, I had been holding my own with careful and strategic play, and a few calculated bluffs. But as far as cards, I had been getting squat. No big pairs, no top hands, and I was starting to get blinded out. Finally, I looked down at pocket kings, the best starting hand I had seen all day. One guy in front of me raised twice the big blind. I re-raised two thousand more. This particular guy had just recently gone all in with a stone cold bluff, 2-7 offsuit, and had made sure to show us and rub our noses in it. I thought he probably had a decent hand, but I still thought I had him beat. He re-raised me all in, and I called. I turned over my kings, and he turned over pocket aces. I couldn't believe it. The whole tournament I'm getting squah-doosh, I finally get a top pair like pocket kings, and this numbnuts has aces. Of course, the aces held up and I was knocked out, thoroughly and completely disgusted.

In fact, I was so thoroughly disgusted that I waited a whole three hours later to play in my next tournament, this time at the Sahara. Every time I'm in Vegas I like to play in the tournament at the Sahara. The buy in is cheap, they usually have about 15 tables for each tournament, and the competition is very good. It's an excellent test of my abilities, and I have probably played about ten tournaments there. I have gone deep in most of them, and the closest I got to the final table was finishing twelfth one time, but I have never made the final table. Last night was no exception.

For the first three hours I was doing well, and I got to the second break with the biggest chip stack at my table. And then I went card dead, which means I had terrible starting hands. I couldn't even bluff, since every pot was raised and the table was full of rocks, who usually had quality starting hands. My stack was going down, and I was in danger of being blinded out.

Finally, I was in middle position with pocket tens. I did a standard three times the big blind raise. Everyone folded except the big blind. He went all in, and I called. I had him covered by three thousand chips, and he turned over pocket eights. It looked I was going to double up my chip stack. Unfortunately, this is where the bad beat thing reared its ugly head. The flop was inconsequential, and the turn was a bust. And then came the river, a big fat eight, giving this jerk-head a set of eights, and pretty much putting me on the rail. A brutal, stinking bad beat, and I was just about gone. I went all in the next hand with AJ, and it looked pretty good when the flop showed jack high, but a queen on the river knocked me out, and I was done. Disgusting.

And that, my friends, pretty much sums up the perils of tournament poker. You have no control over the cards, and the best hand sometimes loses. Anyone who says luck doesn't play a part in tournament poker has never had pocket tens beaten by pocket eights. If you're going to win a tournament, you must play with skill, make the right decisions, have a bit of luck, and your good hands must hold up to win. If you don't have all of those, you're not going to win, whether your name is Phil Hellmuth or Brucefan is Back.