On Saturday, 2/13/2010, I played my second live tournament of the year. It was a dud. I didn't make any serious mistakes, but I never caught any good cards either. I never had AK. I had AQ twice--one time I lost a coin flip*, the other time the preflop action was very heavy and I was in bad postion (small blind) so I didn't play it. I think I had a pocket pair 3 times, and the best was 88.
After playing very few hands, I made it to the final table (which isn't hard when there are only 14 players) and went out when I lost another coin flop, my AJ against 33.
I can't remember the last time I finished in the bottom half of the field (9th of 14 in a live tournament), but when you're not getting cards, there is only so much you can do.
The one thing I don't like about these live tournaments (other than the cigarette smoke) is that the fields (and thus the prize pools) are so small. When I do cash, I would like to win a halfway decent amount. First prize in this tournament was $200. That would be nice to have, but I have played in local tournaments where the prize pool was much bigger, in fact I won $250 in a local tournament last year.
But for now, where I'm playing is the place with the lowest entry fees, and since I don't even have a live bankroll built yet, I'll keep playing in the cheap ones until I build an independent live bankroll big enough to allow me to play at higher buy-ins. I will handle it the same way as my online bankroll, that is, I won't move up to more expensive tournaments until I have around 50 buy-ins at the new level.
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*The poker term "coin flip" usually means a situation where you are facing one opponent for the pot and your chance of winning is around 50%. More commonly it specifically means my situation, where preflop a small pair is against two higher unpaired cards, for example, my situation where my AJ was facing 33 situation. In the overcards vs. small pair "coin flip" the small pair actually wins about 55% of the time.
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