A small win

I woke up today and was sore as could be from lifting and racquetball yesterday. I deciding to just go downstairs and play poker at my desk for the day. I have a 24" LCD monitor that can comfortably fit 4 full poker screens and if I minimize them, probably about 16. I decided to play any tournament $50 or more that would give me 4 tables maximum at one time. I can't handle more than 4 at once. In the Full Tilt 50 at 3:30 EST, I notched another tournament victory under my belt for a little more than 4k . These are not particularly big cashes for online tournaments, but winning a small tourney like this gives me great experience for final tables and guarantees a nice win for the day. I made a couple of bad calls AQ vs AK and A10 vs AK after an A J 3 board. I was down to about 2400 chips at one point with 1k/2k blinds, but managed to stay patient and find some good spots as well as get lucky along the way. My final table play was stellar. I won a clutch race QQ vs AdKd with 7 players left after a 10d xd x flop. From there, I just got my money in ahead against most of the players and played careful poker with my big stack. When we were 4 handed, I managed to go from 300k to 120k without going to a showdown in any hand. I was basically playing super aggressive and not finding any spots that I liked in the tournament. Finally, I went on a little run back up to 200k. Two crucial hands followed. When there were 3 players left, one player I was pretty sure was solid and the other I had a tough time getting a read on. I figured him to be a weak player from plays I had seen earlier in the tournament, but wasn't sure because at times he played hands great. I picked up AJ in the sb and he made a 4x raise on the button. Raising or calling here is really debatable, but in this spot, I felt like he had been aggressive enough that I could reraise and commit here. I bet the pot and he called leaving himself around 60k in chips. Flop came J 8 x. I checked to get him to put his money in and he did with 9 7 and he missed the 10 ball. Heads up was quick when I raised with J4 and was reraise small. I decided to call as I was in position and we were pretty deep. A nice thing about Full Tilt is that when you get to 2 or 3 handed, you usually have a deep enough stack to open up your game to include a lot of different plays. Flop came down 10 4 4 with two diamonds. He fired about 3/4 of the pot or 70k of his 270k stack. I just called here thinking that he was really strong after this bet. I thought he maybe had a huge pair or at the chance he had AK, I didn't want to bet him off the hand right now without giving him the chance to catch. It's also possible he had a pair under 10 10 and that I could at least get more chips from him later on. The turn was a blank and he fired all 200k in the middle. I quickly called and he showed K 8 of diamonds, the flush missed and I was champion. It feels great to win a tournament, but I know that my success as a poker player will not be sustainable if I don't consistently play great all the time and make and go far in big tournaments.

At my best, I feel like I can compete with anybody in the game of poker, but I do not always play at my best. The best players play great all the time and when they have edges, they take advantage of them. Sometimes, I find myself playing in a manner that is reckless and not conducive to tournament success. Patience and timely aggression is really how to win multi-table tournaments, and I'm looking to build from this tiny win.