So I played event 1 of the Wynn Poker Classic which was a 545 buy in and attracted 450 players. Overall, I love playing the first event of tournaments because they attract a wide range of skill levels and generally generate the most excitement aside from the main event of any particular series. After a horrendous run in LA, I was confident and ready to go. Day 1 actually was painful. I've never seen more atrocious play in my entire poker playing career barring the first week on Party Poker. I was slightly amazed because although almost every single live tournament is pretty horrendous in play, they are usually never this bad. Actually in LA, I had a couple of decent first few tables from what I could witness. One guy had accumulated about 130k in level 4 from starting stack of 10k. The hands of consequence were extremely rare. I was playing extremely passive the entire day because when I was actually in a hand with someone and would just call with a solid hand, they would proceed to fire every single betting round. There were probably 4 pots where it went bet call, bet call, bet call and I scooped good size pots. They were the type of players that tended to think that as long as no one raised, their hand was good. Anyway, after a painful AK lay down right before the dinner break on Day 1, I battled back and ended the day with around 85k which was good for 20th out of 50. I actually survived an AK vs JT all in right before the bubble. Coming into Day 2, I was thrilled because I knew I had around a 20bb stack with blinds being at 2k/4k and that was plenty of chips against this field.
Day 2 was hell. I got there and notice that they had colored us up to the next level of chips and raised the level. The floor said that we only had a minute left at the lower level and they wanted to save time and color us up the night before. Color up is a term used to describe the removal of certain lower denomination chips as blinds go up. I could have sworn we had 20 minutes left in the level. The kicker was that there were two day ones playing down to 25 each day. The first Day 1 ended on 3k/6k while we ended on 2k/4k. Moral of the story is that they shouldn't have done this in the first place, but they definitely shouldn't have jumped to the higher level of the two. So while I'm expecting to go in with 20bb, I actually have around 14. Anyway, my table wasn't all that tough from the people I recognized from the day before. There was a solid girl about my age that was across the table that was at my table from Day 1, but with both our stack sizes, I knew if we collided, it would likely be in a situation neither of us could avoid. We lost 20 players rather quickly and I was dealt nothing the first level. We move up to 4000/8000 with a 1k ante and I still have around 80k because of a few timely shoves. Then some guy from Paris, who had easily won 20 pots on Day 1 and 2 by sucking out on someone shoves 280k from the cutoff. LOL!!! This guy tended to bet the amount that correlated to the strength of his hand. He was just precious. I look down at black kings and shove my stack in the middle from the small blind. He rolls over black queens and proceeds to beat me with a better flush.
WAIT WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!???????????????????????????? That is correct. The board rolls out T 9 8 all spades giving him more outs (jack or queen). The turn is the J of spades and his straight flush knocks me out of the tourney in 29th. It was actually my first big pair of the entire tournament. I did not see JJ-AA until that point. With 65,000 to first and a stack that would have handily put me in contention, I had nothing to feel but the urgent need to dropkick a slot machine. I did my standard quiet, "good game" and walked to the parking lot trying not to swear under my breath as I am trying extremely hard to quit swearing. Anyway, this is the type of thing that makes me never want to play poker, something that is currently my career.
Poker is just super funny. The last time I felt this confident about my abilities in something was when I used to ace finance tests in college. With some inevitable pressure involved (grades), I would sit down with full confidence and just get in the zone. If I made a mistake, it was likely just something that was lazy. Even when the problems weren't completely clear, I could eliminate a few options and proceed as follows. After playing now full time for a little over a year, I feel like poker is extremely similar. The pressure has changed because of the money and competition, but the overall confidence and methodical rationality it takes to succeed is exactly the same. Unfortunately, unlike in college where the Scantron would reward me for the correct answers, the poker deck does not always follow the precision of a multiple choice test. Either way, I'm prepared for downswings, but today was just an ugly, ugly beat.
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