The tournament...

Well I have to say that the pot limit Omaha 8 or better tournament last Sunday was a huge success. This was the one tournament I was really looking forward to the most on my trip, not only because I think it is my strongest game but also because I've never played one of these live before. It's very hard to find live tournaments that are anything but hold 'em nowadays. Anyway, the field was much bigger than I thought it was going to be. There were 389 total entrants and I managed to finish in 20th place. The tourny started at 4:00 PM and I think I was finally knocked out around midnight. The buy-in was $150 and my 20th place finish gave me $270. The $120 profit is hardly anything to get excited about but I was very happy to outlast 369 other people. When it finally got down to heads up the two remaining players ended up chopping it and took home about $10,000 each. Of course I would have loved to have made it that far, but I really can't complain.

As far as how I played, it's kinda funny in that I was so short stacked during most of the tournament that I hardly played at all. By the time the dinner break rolled around I was officially in "push mode," which I reach when I am at 10 large blinds or less. From then until I got knocked out about 4 hours later, my only decision was whether or not to pot it before the flop. From then on it was all pretty much up to luck as my hand either held up or it didn't. Fortunately, just about every time it ended up holding up and I didn't really take any bad beats. I don't think I ever pushed without a strong hand, something like A2xx or A3xx with a suited ace or a couple of big cards to go with it. On the hand I got knocked out on, I pushed with that kind of hand for all my chips and the guy had me dominated with a stronger hand, so I can't complain about how I got knocked out. It was gonna happen eventually, and I'm just amazed that I was able to stay alive for so long.

Looking back I can't really think of more than a few hands where I actually had to make post-flop decisions. That's pretty amazing for a tournament that I lasted about 8 hours in, but I was teetering on the edge for so much of the time that it just worked out that way. There was one point when we were down to about 30 that I took a huge pot and got my stacked up to about 30 big blinds, but before too long I was back down to short stacked again. I guess my only regret is that I was not more aggressive when I had those chips because that might have put me in a better position to go deeper, but at the same time I feel like my strategy of being patient and just waiting for strong hands paid off.