've been playing well for the most part, but I've made a few bad (read : loose) calls and suffered a disproportionate amount of coolers. Since my wife is out of town this weekend, I thought it would be a good night to play a couple of tournaments and hopefully get some of that confidence back. I played two tourneys tonight, a $10+1 and a $1+.10, both of which started at 7pm on PokerStars. In the $10 tourney I was able to double up pretty early with 77 vs. AQ on a Q-7-2 flop, but then lost a couple of races and got knocked out when a guy called my pre-flop all-in with A9 and flopped an ace to beat my 10 10.The $1 tourney was a different story, and it was one of those rare tourneys where the suckouts were few and far between - if you got your chips in good your hand tended to actually hold up, which doesn't always seem to happen. I was able to grab some chips early, and for the first couple of hours maintained an average stack. Before I began play, I had made a promise to myself : it's a small buy-in, so bluff as infrequently as possible, and only play top hands behind raises, because people tend to play looser in these smaller events. So I found myself folding 99 behind a raise and a call, and AQ in the SB to a raise from a player that had about as many chips as I did, and managed to save those chips for better hands and better situations.
During the second hour I was able to build a pretty good stack and because of this was able to open up my game a bit and gain a lot of positional equity. One of the stategies that worked extremely well for me in this tourney was my ability make small, odd-size raises and take down a lot of pots pre-flop. I call them "change raises", where I'll raise enough to even out my stack, but it will be smaller than a standard raise. For example, if I have 5674 chips and the blinds are 100-200, I'd raise to 474 rather than the min-raise of 400 or the standard raise of 600-800. With 11084 chips and 200-400 blinds I might raise 1084. To me, they're a great way to mix up my play. I get the same fold equity as I would with a standard raise, while giving my oppponents absolutely no information about the strength of my hand and putting fewer chips at risk.
In the third hour, I really didn't get many good hands, and by the end of the hour I saw my stack slipping back to average-size. Then the key hand of the tourney came up. I change-raised from the button with a measly 10c4c and got called by both blinds, which was not exactly the result I was looking for. However, I was pleasantly surprised when the flop came 9c5c2c. It was checked to me, and I bet about half the pot with my made flush. The small blind immediately went all-in, and I called to find that he had flopped trip deuces. Thankfully my flush held, and just a few hands later I was able to double up again with TT vs. JhTh. This put me in the top 20 or so with about 80 players left. By this time the blinds were getting high, making post-flop play exceedingly rare, and I roller-coastered up and down a few times, winning with 99 vs. A 10 suited when he flopped two to his flush and missed his 15 outs, losing with 66 to AK, and beating AQ with JJ. I eventually crawled my way into the top 10, thanks to a well-thought-out monster bluff from the small blind that was followed immediately by a win with pocket Jacks on the button.
When the 4th hour began, there were about 23 players left from the 1800+ that had started and I was about 13th in chips. Unfortunately, I didn't get a hand for the first two orbits, and then fell victim to a suckout knockout when I went all-in behind a raise with AKo, got called by the raiser with As8s, and watched him turn a flush after a King-high flop. I finished 16th and won a whopping $8 and change, but more importantly, and amazingly, made NO mistakes in the whole tourney. Every time I got my money in the middle, I was at worst in a coin-flip situation, and more often than not I was a favorite. And I don't think I got caught bluffing one time ! It may not be a big win monitarily but confidence-wise it's a much-needed boost !
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