My First Live Tournament

After Charlestown, all I could think about was poker. But, I still didn't quite get the idea that, if I was going to get any better, my fastest route was to simply listen to the advice of the much better player (Lance).

Lance recommended a couple of resources, including twoplustwo.com. I asked, "What's two plus two?" That's how little I knew. He also offered to loan me a book by Dan Harrington on proper Hold 'Em tournament strategy. I mentioned that I found Dan Harrington a bit dry but that I'd try to read it later when I had more time.

I did realize, though, that if I was going to get any better, I needed to get used to playing live. Lance was kind enough to refer me to one of his favorite local groups (I'll leave out the name since I'd like to be able to write about player's styles of play while respecting their privacy). We signed up for the $100-buy-in tournament coming up that Saturday. We would face off against 40 or so other players across multiple tables.

In the car ride over, Lance let me know that at local private touraments like this, that I would be required to deal when I was on the dealer button. I'd never heard of having to deal your own cards much less everyone elses, so this was a variable that I didn't expect nor like. I immediately started thinking about how to handle burn cards instead of my strategy for the tournament.

Despite that, I had learned a valuable lesson in Charlestown... until you're used to the table and able to think rationally while playing, it's probably a good idea to simply play conservatively and very few hands. It helps cultivate a tight image and, for a newbie like me, let's you get adjusted to even just being there in the first place.

After the first hour or so we had a break. Lance swung by from his table and noticed that I had a decent chip stack. At that point, I'd only played 4 or 5 hands and had won them all, in part because, at this point, I still knew nothing about bet sizing and was overbetting most of my hands to the point where, even if I'd wanted a call, no one could.

After the break, I got Q-Q and raised preflop. I raised 3 or 4 times the big blind but was in early position which wasn't good. I got two callers. One had been playing pretty tightly all game; the other was a looser, more aggressive player who had accumulated a decent chip stack and had me covered. The flop came down all undercards but with 3 clubs. I didn't have a single club but wasn't going to get outdrawn.

I bet into the pot but probably not enough. It was enough to get out the tight player. The more aggressive player saw that I had been conservative all day and made the correct decision to come over the top and to reraise me. He'd bet enough that I could call but would have been very short stacked if I had. I folded my queens. I'm still not sure if this was a good fold or not; I'd have to play against the guy a few more times to decide.

I wasn't exactly short stacked at this point, but the blids were getting up into the $200/$400 range and I needed to begin playing more aggressively to keep from having the blinds eat away my chips. I lucked into a K-K hand and decided to try to double up or, at the very least, steal the blinds. I bet 5 times the pot; three players were left to act after me. Two folded; the conservative player from earlier moved all in against me. Because of how he'd been playing, I knew he had A-K, AA, KK, or possibly QQ, but that he likely wouldn't have made this move with anything else. He also had better position on me. But, it was an obvious call I had to make.

He flipped over pocket Aces. My KK went heads up against his AA and he took the pot, knocking me out of the tournament. I ended up busting out of the tournament as the 3rd or 4th to go. The tournament would go on for another 9 or 10 hours; my table in particular had some excellent players.

I left there feeling very proud of my playing, though. Although my betting amounts were probably a ways off, for my first live tournament, it was a respectable showing, despite the early bust out.

I had played okay.