I’m a pretty rock-like tournament player, this is no big secret. It works well for the most part due to the silliness of many online tourney players, especially the ultra-low buyin crapshoots I tend to play in once a week or so. Just wait for a premium hand or a big blind special and then punish the loose folks who will call anything or want to try and run a WPT style bluff on you with their 92 off.
The thing I can’t seem to wrap my noodle around is why patience and good sense seem to leave me once the final stages of a tourney can be seen in the distance. In the early and middle stages of a tourney, it’s not a problem to be what the Doritos commercials have referred to in the past as “bold AND daring”. However, once we reach the later stages, I’ve been turning into an impatient idiot, a scared little bitch, or both.
Last night was a perfect example, yet again. $3 Sunday Crapshoot on Stars, 1850 entrants. We’re down to 105 and I’m approximately middle of the pack. Per usual, I get sat down at the table with all of the giant stacks in the tourney and am simply biding time. I get AKo in mid position and the player in front of me (super tight) with about half my stack makes it 8000 to go (1K/2/K/100). After considering my options, I folded. Dumb, dumb, dumb. I had position and chips, but folded like a punk because I didn’t want to get involved in a coin flip.
Compounding this error, I get AQo the very next hand and limp. SB min-raises, BB and I call. It’s worth noting here that the BB had been playing pretty wild the whole time I was at the table and catching some extremely lucky cards with marginal or crap hands. Flop J 8 9, 2 clubs. BB bets out 8000 into the 12000 pot, and I push on the (insane) logic the I have a straight draw and 2 overs, plus I thought he was just trying to buy the pot. Insta-called, he flips over the J9 for flopped two pair and I’m sent packing, deservedly so for such an idiot play. I knew when I did it that it was the wrong thing to do, yet my hand on the laptop seemed to be acting independently of my brain. Maybe that spliff from earlier had something to do with it.
If anyone has any advice or techniques they use in the later stages to keep themselves from egregiously fucking up and feels like sharing, it would be most appreciated, but not wholly necessary. I really just needed to write this in order to publicly berate myself so hopefully I’ll learn from mistakes that are in the 'completely obvious' department. The later the tournament stage, the less I seem to be valuing my good holdings just because of the blind size, and that REALLY needs to stop. It’s also one of those things that just comes with practice. Due to my style of play, I often come into the latter tourney stages with a short stack, and have no problems playing. The problems come when I have a decent or large stack, which seems counterintuitive, but it’s true, nonetheless.
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