Full Tilt Sit-N-Go

Recently, my confidence has been lessened in tournament play because of a string of really, really bad beats. In the past 3 weeks, I've had a 2 outer hit with 2 cards to come for my tournament life at Ameristar, and I've had several times where I've had my opponent dominated, but got outdrawn for my tournament life. Everyone has these runs, and learning to handle the associated emotions has been extremely important in the development of my game. But all of these recent games have been live at Ameristar's Tuesday night tournament. I have been very intimidated to play online, as serial losses happen a lot faster when you are dealt twice as many hands per hour (or whatever it is).

When I do play online, I pretty much stick to sit-n-gos at Full Tilt. I enjoy the ability to sit down whenever I want and play within about 5 minutes. I also like the whole experience to be over with in about an hour or a little longer. Tonight, while in Champaign, Illinois on business travel, I decided to unwind at the end of the night with another game. I was really, really apprehensive to do so, as my Pavlovian response is that poker is bad and costs me money as of late. It also costs me years off my ticker.

So tonight, as usual, I set out to win. I played a 18-person tournament, and I dominated. I got several big hands, and I set huge traps against agressive players. My bluffs were working very frequently against the weaker players. With 6 players left, I had half the chips in play, and I never dipped again below 40% of the chips in play for the rest of the tournament.

Tonight, one of the other players at the table liked to push all-in pre-flop for 10 and 20 times the big blind, and he did it really, really frequently. None of the hands went to showdown until the end, but I suspected that it was when he had a hand range like:

• any pair
• any ace higher than an 8
• any two broadway cards that included at least one king or queen

I knew that if I got heads-up with this guy, that I'd have no problem defeating him, as he was going to put way too much at risk when I had the goods. I did my fair share of stealing and lite raising, which is absolutely necessary in late-stage tournament play. I even set him up a few times with min-raises that I repeatedly folded to a re-raise so that I could build a huge pot with a big hand and shove. I was dealt A-A three times and K-K once during the course of the tournament, but I only got action on one of the pairs of aces, and it was well before I was heads-up.

I thought this guy was good, but I thought I had a few significant edges and reads on his play. I was really looking for the final knock-out, which required some setup, including using the chat window and some of that wonderful lingo that is used in online chatting, like:

• nh
• thought u wr bluffng
• u2

All of this was an attempt to lure him into thinking that I didn't have as much experience as him. Honestly, I don't know if it worked, but he did play along and "coach" me a little. Thanks, bud. Oh, and thanks for all your chips and calling with middle pair at the end. My top pair, three kicker had him blown away. He was a really nice guy, though, and I'm glad I got a chance to play with him, as I was able to prove that I can use my observational skills to seek and destroy.

To quote high-stakes pro Chau Giang, "Poker is nice. I love play poker."