It takes a lot to win a poker tournament.
Some players never accomplish this feat, and based on my experiences as a poker player over the years; I can see some of the reasons why.
Whether there are 20, 200 or 2,000 players competing for first place, every one of them has the same goal in mind -- to emerge on top of the pile.
This means they are capable of rash plays if the game is no-limit or pot limit. A limit game, of course, has different rules. You start out with a lot of chips and can plan your game to gain mileage on the other players. It will take you more time to lose your money.
Even a player who has won tournaments in the past can run into serious problems winning a tournament if he has a string of losses.
It's easy to lost confidence when you are playing in a tournament. You suffer a bad beat or two, your stack of chips shrinks, and suddenly you are in danger of becoming a railbird. That is not good for the ego. I can assure you of that fact from my past experience.
But poker players never die and they keep on coming back for more, as I proved this past weekend at the BestBet Casino in Jacksonville, FL.
For starters, I like the management people and the dealers at BestBet. They are professionals in every sense of the word and work overtime to make poker exciting and fair to their customers.
Most of their tournaments are no-limit Texas Hold'em and that is where we sometimes find ourselves at odds. I keep urging the management team and the poker room supervisor to add variety to the tournaments. Monday night is the only time the casino will stage an Omaha High-Low event, for example. It's pot limit and it is great competition. It also happens to be my favorite tournament at BestBet.
The dealers and management team listen patiently to my arguments in favor of mixed games. For the most part, they agree with me. But they say most of the players simply are not interested in playing anything but Texas Hold'em, an argument I find hard to believe.
To me, it's just a case of expediency. It's easier to gear your dealers up for a Texas Hold'em event. The game moves faster -- there are only two cards rather than four to worry about -- and the dealers are more experienced at dealing Hold'em rather than Omaha High-Low, which is a more complex game.
I took the Amtrak train out of North Charleston to Jacksonville, hoping to break my losing streak in playing tournaments. My companions on the train turned out to be pleasant. In the dining room car, I met a 6-4 aspiring basketball player from West Virginia. Ethan Jones is his name, he is 17 years old but looks 20. His favorite basketball player is Larry Byrd and he points out, 'My body style is comparable to his. I have some pretty good moves and a great shot. After I graduate from high school, I want to play for the Mountaineers.' I gave him a high five and told him I wanted to write his book after he became a star in the NBA. He grinned and nodded.
I arrived at BestBet on Saturday just before noon and proceeded to start losing. I lost several hundred playing pot-limit Omaha High-Low when the cards simply refused to come to me.
I tried playing a little no-limit Texas Holdem, and bounced back. Sunday was another disaster for me and I found myself with a diminished bankroll. I went to bed Sunday night dreaming about the Monday evening tournament.
A total of 125 players signed up for the $125 buy-in bounty tournament. As I paid my entry fee, I turned to the poker room manager and said, 'I plan to win this tournament.' He smiled.
The Omaha High-Low players at Best-Bet are veterans of the game and most of them are good. Each of us received $8,000 in chips with starting blinds of $25 and $50. Every 20 minutes the blinds doubled. After a while, at pot limit, you can lose your entire stack in a single hand.
I prevailed.
I went down and then up in my stack of chips, but I somehow kept an edge on the competition. I felt like I was back in the saddle again.
With only five players remaining in the tournament, I had the least number of chips. Then I made a big play by calling a raise by the chip leader and snapped him off. He smiled weakly as the dealer pushed me the pot.
Just before midnight, I won the final pot and shook hands with the runner-up. As I waited to be paid the $1,000 first prize, the poker room manager said, 'You told me you were going to win and you did. Congratulations.'
If only he knew how hard it was for me to keep that promise......
Author: Geno Lawrenzi Jr.
(Geno Lawrenzi Jr. is an international journalist, magazine author and ghostwriter and poker player who lives in Phoenx, AZ. He has published 2,000 articles in 50 magazines and 125 newspapers. If you want to share a gambling story or book idea with him, send an email to [email protected] ).
