Deep MTT run

When I first started playing poker all I did was play the big MTT freerolls. Once I finally deposited and started playing for real I quit the MTT’s. They take up an awful long time and usually your payout is not worth the time invested. About the only MTT’s I have played lately are a few FPP buy-in’s. Well last night I had ANOTHER bad run with the $5.20 DON’s and was down $20.00. I got some back playing HU SNG but wasn’t in the right frame of mind to focus for heads-up play. I went ahead and signed up for the little dinky $.25 buy-in MTT that was about to start instead. I figured I would get an hour or so of play for $.25 and just have some fun and then call it a losing night. There ended up being over 3,600 people registered when it began and it was paying 702 places. I think you could just sit out and make the payouts in this tournament if you wanted to! People go out faster than a freeroll! I know it’s only $.25 but come on…the first 20 minutes and a 1,000 are already gone! My strategy for these low buy-in MTT’s has been to limp in late position with suited connectors or hands like KJ or KQ and hope for a very nice flop…or if I have a pair to push it pretty hard. The higher the pair the harder I push.. In these things if I have 10-10 or better I am really jamming the pot preflop..400-500 in the early rounds.. I am going to be moving all in after the flop with these hands anyway since at these buy-ins idiots will call with almost anything so I give them no credit early on. If I am beat by a monster oh well. I definitely small ball it until I have a really nice hand. I don’t get to pushy with top pair early on. I don’t get too concerned with building a stack in these until we are in the money. If I can maintain around 2000-3000 chips the first hour then I am happy. After the first break is usually about the time you hit the money.. it’s also about the time I go into push or fold strategy. Now the blinds are big enough that they can really increase your stack even in noone calls you. I just wait for a nice starting hand and push. I will normally get called by a big stack that has been playing almost every pot the whole tourney and just got lucky a few times. Bam..double up number one…in one hand I am above average chip stack again. The weak players that like to limp every hand or raise with garbage just don’t know when to back off and they lose their stacks pretty quickly. So back to last night…….. 1st hour..about average stack and only played 3 or 4 pots…hit the money just after 1st break..Yay.. I’m rich..LOL… 2nd hour… still about average stack but I upped the number of pots played to 10 and we are down to 400 left. 3rd hour I get some nice hands and double up a few times and then I can finally start to steal some pots. I made it all the way to 2nd chip spot for a few minutes and we are down to 150 left. 4th hour (yes these things are long!) I go card dead (and I mean dead!!!) I probably only played 5 or 6 pots that hour and watched my stack slowly dwindle from top 10 stack down to just average and we are down to around 25 left. 5th hour I figured we would burn through to the final table pretty quickly…nope!! It took the whole hour to get down to the final table. I got one double up to get my stack back up and then picked my spots to steal. 6th hour I went into final table 6th in chips out of the 9. Now the payouts really jumped and the people started dropping like flies. After 6 hours of play and now they choose to play like donkeys when the $141.00 is in reach?? I don’t understand it. One guy raised preflop and was called. He pushed all in after the flop with K-2 when he had bottom pair and two other face cards were on the board? Well in 30 minutes we were down to just 3.. and we were all about even stacks. With the big payout in reach it was my turn to make the donk move!!! I push all-in w/ A-9 and the small blind snap calls with A-K and I am done… Sheesh what an idiot I am.. well the $48.00 helped ease the pain of being an idiot, but it still sucks going that far and messing up. Still all-in-all a good run for me.

C-ya at the tables
Dave

Starting BR $100
Ending BR $132