Surprisingly, I Can Still Play Tournaments

My cash game results have been crap lately, and I seem to only show a consistent profit in SNGs for the last few weeks. Since I struggle to make a CT Thursday night final table and haven’t played in many other tournaments, I decided to see if I can still play tournaments. So, I made the decision to play the $26 buy-in FullTilt $25,000 guarantee on Saturday night, and really focus and be ready to stay up late to make a strong finish. I also entered two other tournaments that started at the same time – a $75 FT satellite to a FTOPS tournament and a 90-seat $11 SNG.

Results:

$75 Satellite: There were only about 30 entrants, and it paid six $215 seats (and I would unregister and take the cash). Within the first 5 minutes, my AA were all in vs KK and QQ pre-flop. A king hit on the turn and I’m gone. I could have coasted to a cash finish with a triple+ stack in that one.

90-player deep-stack $11 SNG: 1st place, $250 cash. I can still play medium sized tournaments, despite my CT performance. All of the SNG and HU play really paid off here. At the final table, I was about 4th in chips at the start. I just played it like a SNG, with patience early and then aggression when we were down to 4 players. Others seemed to panic too early and dumped chips with moderate hands.

Despite the fact that this was a deep-stack tournament, I suffered a bad beat at the second level and was down to around 900 when everyone else had 3000+. I used all my hard-earned skills from the weekly CT tournaments and nursed a small stack for quite some time through early and mid-levels until I worked back up to a respectable stack size.

$25,000 guarantee, 1614 entrants: 24th place, $166 cash. At three tables, I was 5th in chips. The crippling hand was my 99 vs AK. Early player limped, I raised 4xBB, and button pushed. I was ABSOLUTELY sure button had AK based on my read of his past play. I made the conscious decision to race, knowing that if I won I would have been 2nd in chips, way in front with the chip leader, and would surely have made the final table. I lost the race, but I was actually very satisfied that I read the hand exactly right – it was like I could see everyone’s cards face up. This was actually the most satisfying hand of the tournament because I was so sure of my read, and I was right.

The Bodog Challenge
I deposited $100 in a Bodog account at the start of the football season, for some fun sports bets. I did OK with the sports bets, but played in a few NL cash games and suffered suckouts. So now I have $31 on there. How far can I run that $31? I'm starting with SNGs.