9/4/2010--Deepest finish in a long time

I just finished a tournament, after playing for 4 hours and 41 minutes. I think it's the second longest I've ever played in an online tournament. There were 3,847 players, and I finished 53rd. Entry was $1.10 and I won $7.30. I would have preferred $606.67 for first place, but it shows that I'm definitely on the right track.

This month I had played 8 tournaments and not cashed in any of them until now. My cash today got me a good chunk of that money back. That's kind of a miniature version of what it's going to be like as an MTT spoecialist, only usually with more time between cashes, but the cash being worth 25, 50, or 200 buy-ins.

I learned a lot in that tournament, the kind of thing that you can only learn from experience, not from books. I got the feel of how people play in the top 100, and perhaps more important, what kind of stack you need to have to get some respect when you push all-in.

Once we were in the top 100, it seemed that few players wanted to challenge my all-ins (unless they had a top 5% hand) when I had a stack at least 50% of villian's stack. That is, they didn't want to risk losing half their stack to try to knock me out.

Of course this is a mistake. Any time you think you are in the top half of villian's range (that is, you are playing a hand that is ahead of at least 50% of the hands that he would be likely to play in this situation), you should go for it. If you're fighting for the big money, and you're not willing to risk all your chips with what you estimate as a 53% chance of winning, you're not going to see very many final tables.

If you're not willing to push small edges, you're playing the wrong game. You might as well pick up your toys and go home to mommy, wherever everything is warm and safe.