Slow weekend

Another slow weekend for me. I didn't play any poker at all until late Sunday night. For some reason I got the urge to play right about the time I should have been heading off to bed. Figured maybe I'd hit up one of the $8 Turbo Tier One tourneys and pick up a ticket for tonight's MATH.

I get seated and we're about to get underway when I look around and find smokkee a couple seats to my right. I expect to see these guys in the blogger tournaments, but it always kind of freaks me out to bump into bloggers in open tournaments. Smokkee got moved to the other table fairly quickly and I didn't see him again until we made the final table.

It was a pretty good tournament for me. I actually caught a few decent hands, not that I was able to capitalize on them to any great degree.

Only one major suckout, and even on that the other guy was the one who made the mistakes. It folds to me in the SB and I raise to 600 (100/200 blinds) with air. BB, with M=4 even before posting the blind, simply calls with what turns out to be a pair of fours. The flop is T62, giving me bottom pair. I bet enough to put him all-in. He calls. I just don't get this. If he wants to play the fours, he should have pushed before the flop. I probably would have let it go and he'd have increased his M to 6. After the flop, looking at two overcards and a flush draw he decides to toss in the rest? If he read me for a bluff and a c-bet, more power to him, but I have a tough time believing it. I turned a deuce and he went home out of the money.

That suckout left me in a very healthy position and I was able to fairly easily work my way into a ticket.

I'm still troubled a bit by the people playing in these things who clearly don't grasp that optimum strategy at the final table of one of these is quite different than in regular tournaments. When five of the final nine win the top prize, the goal is not to amass the most chips, but to eliminate other players. When a shortie pushes all-in and you have a healthy stack and a good hand, you don't re-raise. You call and hope all the other big stacks behind you do the same. Collectively you have far more outs than any of you individually. You don't bet other people out of the pot unless you have THE nuts, and even then it's a marginal play unless you think you can suck another player into an elimination.

It may seem against the rules, but passive collaboration is the best strategy. The big stacks should be joining forces to eliminate the little stacks.

Smokkee and I both got our tickets. I'm going to use mine in tonight's MATH. Hope to see you there.