GCP has asked me to make my regular updates to my blog on Thursdays. It just so happens that this coincides with my favorite day of the month this month. Once a month, I run a very large poker tournament in Austin. It used to be over 200 people at $100 buy in with $100 rebuys for the first hour. It was great, but just got to be too large to manage without compensation. (it is illegal to make money operating a poker game in Texas. Stupid law, but that will be a topic for a future post.)
Anyway, I started these up again 3 months ago but with a much larger buy in to thin the field a little, and Thursday, August 2nd, is the next one. The format is $300 buy in, with unlimited $300 rebuys for the first 2 levels (40 minutes each) with a single $300 add on. The tournament is capped at 50 people and should be full. I finished 2nd in a small $300 buy in on Tuesday, so I am ready for this one. I will post my results Friday or Saturday, and I will try and remember a few key hands for your critique, but for now, I want to talk about what I will call "tournament anticipation."
I am sure everyone gets this, but I am convinced that this is what keeps me coming back and spending insane amounts of money to enter tournaments. I don't think there is a better feeling in poker than knowing you are about to participate in an event that could pay off a great deal of money. Everyone walks in the room, absolutely sure that they are destined to win. Once you get started, every win reinforces that feeling, and every loss forces you to dig deep to believe that you will overcome that drop in chips to win in the end.
What I have noticed playing many tournaments is that when that 'invincible' feeling starts to fade, that is when I lose. Although I am just beginning to analyze the effect of this feeling on the game, I really believe that maintaining that feeling is a key factor in winning tournaments. It isn't that I believe that emotions can control the cards that come, but I believe that your beliefs and emotions can project tells to your opponents, thus making the feeling a self fulfilling proficy.
For example, in the tournament on Tuesday when I finished 2nd, I had that feeling I was going to win all the way until we got heads up. Suddenly, I just started to 'feel' that I was going to lose. From that point, all the decisions I made were wrong. The odd thing was, the entire final table, I was hoping to get heads up with this guy, because I thought he would be the easiest to beat. He did get a crazy run of cards (KK five times heads up), but I should have been able to overcome that.
Tomorrow, I will focus on maintaining those positive thoughts and see where it takes me.
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4 comments:
Ya'll must have had some deep stacks heads up. KK 5 times heads up is tough to overcome. At some point you have to flop top pair vs. them (not aces) and lose a decent amount of chips.
well, i folded 3 times to his reraises, so I didnt lose a ton of chips. The fourth time, I sucked out a flush on him, and the last time was the end of the tourney. We were deep stacked as well.
Nice run ..Good luck tonight... I am enjoying your Blog
Dwayne
Thank you. Glad you are enjoying it. I will post my results tomorrow.
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