When I enter a tournament I’m playing to win. Secondly I’m playing to make the top 3. Thirdly, the Final Table. Fourthly, to cash and make a profit. Fifthly, to enter and play competitively up to my capabilities.
If I don’t even cash, I can’t say, “I’ve played my A game.” Many players who have busted out well short of even cashing have said to me “I played well…” or “I feel good about how I played.” – while the compassion inside me responds with, “that’s good to hear,” the ruthless competitor in me says, “so you feel good, but we got a bad result.” that’s interesting.
I’m not saying you should feel bad. Feeling good about how you’ve played a tournament is nice, but we need to focus on those things that are going to give us results. And I don’t consider going out before the money a desirable result.
In my tournament today at The Venetian I went out 70 / 265 falling way short of the money. I was very disappointed in my result as I had played well all day…that was until I got diverted. I had agreed to do a radio / webinar broadcast a couple of weeks before and not wanting to disappoint the hosts I took a 30 min break from my tournament and did the interview. I had a leading chip stack when I left and by the time I got back I was just above average. Two key hands later, I was out. I had flopped a set on the first one and ran a triple barrel bluff on the other. Hands that should have gotten through, but didn’t. Perhaps my edge was dulled by my diversion. A rookie mistake which scores me a “D” on my post game report card.
Here was my final triple barrel bluff hand in which I tried to represent JT on the river, but my opponent wasn’t having it. I was about 10k under avg. at the start of this hand and was looking to get back into the swing of things after having flopped a set and lose about 30 mins earlier.
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