Played the Caesar’s noon tourney both yesterday and today. Good field, good prize pool, so-so structure. Basically there’s a jump from 200/400/50 to 400/800/100 that makes your stack look pretty dismal when just a moment before everything was cool. Yesterday I did a poor job of adjusting to this and ended up bleeding off all my chips in the kind of slow death you’re never supposed to experience. Today, I played much better and ran my chips up nicely until we reached the tipping point. Here I called a short stack’s all in with AA only to lose half my stack to him when he spike a set on the river; I lost the rest of my stack calling an all-in with KK. On that hand the initial raiser held QQ and the chip leader behind us called with 78s. You can guess who won that one. I played well today and know I played correctly. Two river cards made the difference between chip leader and rail bird.
So why do I play tournaments? Especially when I was able to sit down and collect $450 in four hours in the 15/30 limit games last night. Granted the potential payoff in a tourney is much higher; I guess I am wrestling with the question of whether I play for fun or for profit. This trip I’ve done a bit of both and I’m happy.
Now everyone wish Maroon good luck as he defends his position as chip leader in the Main Event!
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2 replies on “Vegas: or, why do I play tournaments?”
Jodi,
IMO we play tournaments because you can win them.
Making $100/hr at a cash table is fantastic, but in the end you have $400.
Win a tournament and you not only have a heap of money, but you have a story. And you can tell all your friends you won!
That’s my take anyway. The take of a guy who played a competitive sport of some sort year round for his entire childhood and a good chunk of his adult life too.
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Poker is about the greatest thing ive come across. It gives people the chance to live the american dream.