Monday, May 19, 2008

FTOPS ME: 146th place finish


The Full Tilt Online Poker Series Main Event is a tournament I always try to turn out for. It's filled with donkeys and has a huge first place payout. I'd love to hit it big someday.

Instead, I'll settle for 146th place out of 4,750 players, for a decent $1,900 payout. I'll take it. The real money is at the final two tables, so I feel OK about busting when I did rather than creeping along for a slightly higher prize. You have to play for the real money.

The story of this tournament for me was success -- and eventual failure -- with AK.

Over 398 hands played, I was dealt AK 11 times, and I won with it all but once, on my bustout hand. Three times when I was called with AK, I flopped an Ace or a King. Once I didn't, on my last hand.

The other impression I'm left with from this tournament is the absolute importance of stealing and restealing, even with mediocre hands. I believe I simply won't get enough good cards in most tournaments to be able to wait for a premium hand. I need to constantly seek out situations where I can force opponents to fold, giving me chips without having to see a flop.

Those steals worked well until I overshoved with 66 with an M of about 7 and got called by QQ for my biggest loss of the tourney.

Other than all those AK hands, it seems like I didn't get dealt many decent cards. I had AQ four times, AJ twice and KK twice (neither of which won me many chips). My next-best hand was TT, which I folded three times preflop (and would have lost all three times).

There's not much more to say. You have to steal to stay alive, and I felt like I did a good job to accumulate enough chips through steals to build my stack for when those AK hands doubled me up.

Thanks to my backers and railbirds: Kuro, Fuel, RecessRampage, Pirate Lawyer and cmitch.

8 comments:

cmitch said...

Awesome job beating 4,600 other players!!! If only that last AK had gone your way....

kurokitty said...

Congrats!

Eric a.k.a. Bone Daddy said...

decent score and congrats.

I like your logic that making it 100 places higher takes soooo much more of your soul for so little benifit in payout.

BamBam said...

Nice run Gnome!

Mondogarage said...

Any cash in an FTOPS ME is a big deal -- wish it could have been about 12 tables deeper, but great run anyway, and way to represent the blogosphere.

Hammer Player a.k.a Hoyazo said...

Awesome run, Gnome. Wish I had been there to watch.

10 for 11 with AK, you can't beat that, right?

Fuel55 said...

10/11 is a lot better than my 0/1 with AK! Nice run - eventually the deck will smack one of us upside the head.

CC said...

Terrific work!