A Painful Loss

I finished my tournaments for the day.  A $3.30 tournament with 40 players started at 2314 last night and I was knocked out at 0124 this morning.

It was one of those tournaments where I was having trouble getting any traction. I hung in there, staying around the bottom of the pack, as players were knocked out.  Nine players would cash and I was between about 10th and 15th most of the time.  When we got down to 11 players I knew that I had a good chance to move up.  When you play certain tournaments you get a feel for the dynamics and I knew that in this one I had a good chance to move up.  Here's why:

At tournaments with buy-ins < $5, players don't know how to move up.  They don't know how to use a push-fold chart to play optimally, taking big risks to win the big paydays in the top three cashing spots.  They also don't know when, even with a small stack, there is a good chance to move up one or two spots with little risk.  Most pros believe that it's all about the big risk for the big payday, but I think that both approaches have their place--and in the real world, a lot of pros play that way, even if their actions don't match their rhetoric.  It's called "laddering up."*  [I hate it when nouns are turned into verbs, for example, nerds are no longer writing computer programs as I did in college, they are "coding."]

Here is my brilliant analysis** of why I thought it would be easy to move up in my situation:

1. The blinds and antes would not hit me as often as they would at the usual (for Juicy Stakes Poker) 8-player tables, so I would have some room to work.  In fact, I chose to play that tournament largely because it had a 10-player table.

A player is on average dealt a pair in no-limit holdem once every 17 hands.  At the usual 8-player table I would be much less likely to get a pair in the first two or three orbits.  While my stack was being cut down by the blinds and antes I could play go two orbits or more without getting a pair.  At a 10-player table the blinds would hit me less often and I would be much more likely to be dealt a pair in the first two or three orbits.

2. I got to the final table in 10th place, needing only one knockout to be in the money.  Of course, I didn't want to just squeak into the money and get a cash about the size of my buy-in.  I would be looking for the right had and/or situation to move up several spots, and I got it.

In the first four orbits I was dealt two pairs.  I went all-in with 66 and everyone folded, increasing my stack size by about 1/4.  The second pair was AA, and I was in business.  I didn't just want to squeak into the money, I was looking for a hand or a situation good enough to move me up a few spots, and I got it.  Tenth place bet, I shoved, 10th place and a big stack both called.  If I won the hand I would move up to 7th.  I don't rememberthe exact details of the hand but I remember the result.  The big stack had two hearts and got his flush on the river.

The big stack knocked both me and the other small stack out.  Since we were both knocked out at the same time, the player who started the hand with the most chips (9th place) kept that last cashing spot.  I finished 10th and missed the money.

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*https://betting.betfair.com/poker/marcus-bateman/laddering-at-mtt-final-tables-141108.html

**The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft a-gley.
Translation: The best-laid plans of mice and men [and poker players] often go awry. ---  Robert Burns