Past My Sell-by Date

YTD: +$23552.45

I really thought my name was on the prize of the WCOOP PLO8b tourney.  I know I am very good at the game.  I know the field isn’t.  I am not going to play a lot of the WCOOP but this was the one that I felt supremely confident about.

I played crap.

Or rather for 4 hours I played well, except for about 3 hands where I played just as bad as you possibly can.  Crucially, I bet top and bottom pair into a big field, and kept betting it even though the warning lights were going off.  As the line goes in one of my favourite Simpson’s: “Is a flashing red light ever a good sign?”  I ignored it and effectively crippled myself.

The problem with tournaments now for me is that I almost never play them.  This year I have played less than 50, discounting sitngo’s and satellites.  I simply don’t sit down for 5 -10 hours at a stretch anymore.  I’m starting to think that mentally and physically I can’t sit down for that long.  Also, when playing cash plo8b I always have at least 100 big blinds in front of me.  My whole style of play has developed around the big implied odds of a big stack.  Of course you simply never get the same stack sizes in a tourney, especially in the later stages.  So plo8b becomes “tourney poker”.  Ho hum.

I have qualified for the PLO and I will definitely play that.  I may also play the NLHE 500, not because I like my chances – I don’t – but because if I’m going to get lucky, I may as well have the best return for my investment.  Let the poker gods be kind :-)

Thanks again folks for the comments…keep them coming.  And if you’re a newbie, check out the comments, they’re often better than the posts!