Money for Nothing

The old saying "It takes money to make money" is not exactly true when it comes to poker. Many online poker sites offer freerolls: tournaments where players do not have to pay anything to enter but will still pay out real money to the winners. Usually the payouts are pretty small and since it doesn't cost anything to enter, sometimes the number of competitors is enormous, but freerolls offer a very rare thing: the chance to win a little without risking anything.

One of the reasons I like playing on Full Tilt is that they offer a lot of freerolls. Pretty much every hour, a freeroll starts. Most of them will only (only!) take a maximum of 7,600 players and out of that massive field only the top 45 finishers will be in the money, with prizes ranging from about $14 for first down to about $1.50 for 45th place. With such a large field, you would have to finish in the top half of one percent of players to getting anything at all! Even if you don't put any money into them, these bigger freerolls still usually demand a large time investment; taking about five hours to play from start to final table.

With such slim odds and such a long time commitment to win such small amounts of money, it is not surprising that a lot of people regard freerolls as a waste of time. Are they? Anette Obrestad was a fifteen-year-old Norwegian girl who (it is claimed) never deposited any money into on-line poker, but with money she won in freerolls went on to win amass over $800,000 before she turned eighteen.

And not all freerolls have such big fields and slim odds as the hourly tournaments I mentioned earlier. Full tilt has a daily tournament where the entry free is $500,000 in play money, and $40 in real money is divided among the top 18 finishers ($5 for first, $3 for second and $2 for everyone who finishes 3rd to 18th). I played it the other day - guess how many players were in it? 32. That's right - more people finished in the money that not. (For the record, I came in 8th). While some might not say this is exactly a freeroll since I had to put up $500,000 in play money, in my mind $500,000 in play money is worth about, oh, I'd say $0 in real money. So yeah, I'd call this a freeroll.

Every Hand Revealed

Every Hand Revealed,
by Gus Hansen
2008, Lyle Stuart Books

I vaguely recall a story about a general who the night before a huge battle was approached by his second-in-command. Since it was possible that the General might fall in battle, the Second wanted to know his battle strategy so that he could carry on in this case. The general asked his second if he knew what the enemy's plans were for the battle and when the second said that he had no idea the general replied that he could not say what his strategy was until he saw what the enemies strategy was. Or something like that.

During the 2007 Aussie Millions tournament, Gus Hansen used a small hand held recording device to record every single hand he was involved in, and then he later fleshed out the book by describing the thinking behind every decision he made. The result is an amazing glimpse into the thinking of one of the games most innovative and successful players.

I have read a few books about poker tournament strategy and while I have learned some valuable things, I knew that the generalities would only get me so far - that in specific situations I would be on my own. What I like about Every Hand Revealed is that it is entirely situational, giving the reader a real hand-by-hand example of how a great player navigates a tournament. While the reader will never be in exactly the same position against the same players as Hansen - it is a much more instructive book than most because it teaches a thought process rather than a specific strategy. This is, I think, revelatory. Up until now I thought that to be a great tournament player I needed to memorize a number of different strategies and know when to apply them - but Hansen has opened my eyes to the importance of understanding the reasoning behind the strategy - the proper thinking that lies behind the proper action.

Gus Hansen is by most standards an extremely aggressive player. I have always been a proponent of tight-conservative tournament play (at least in the early stages) and have dismissed play like Hansen's as too reckless. But Hansen has shown me that there is a method to his madness, that the aggression is not applied indiscriminately. Hansen more than most players has a great understanding of the mathematics of the game, and most of his aggressive moves make sense when he breaks down the math behind them. But what I like most is that Hansen is also a great reader of his opponents. He often makes statements such as "nobody seemed very interested in the flop" before he decides a continuation bet is in order.

And he is human. He makes a bone-headed move now and again. I particularly enjoy the occasions when he spends a page describing how he spent five minutes figuring out what the proper action is before doing the wrong thing. "Why did I do that?" he writes, "I have absolutely no idea."

I highly recommend Every Hand Revealed. It won't give you any magic formulas that will work every time but it might help you learn to think your way through a tournament.

Folding AA

Poker is situational - and this is particularly true in tournament play. Let me give you an extreme example. I was playing a massive one-line tournament last weekend with over 9,000 competitors. The last 250 player left standing would be given entry to another more potentially lucrative tournament. This is a very unusual structure - the person who finishes 1st and the person who finishes 250th get exactly the same thing! Needless to say, such a structure should have a great influence on the way you play but interestingly enough a lot of players have a hard time adjusting.

Like many low or no-buy in tournaments with massive competitors, the first few rounds were a stupid all-in fest; and the field shrank by half in less than an hour, those aggressive risk-takers who had not gone bust had accumulated huge stacks - in fact it was obvious that those in the top ten spots had so many chips that they could fold the rest of the way and still finish in the top 250. But would players who had been so aggressive be able to stop themselves? Out of curiosity, I flagged the top ten at that point to see how many would make the cut.

My own strategy was simple: play my best and see what happens. What happened was I did really well, and when we were down to 500 players I was in 180th spot - not quite to the point I could fold everything, but I could make it if I didn't do something incredibly dumb. The closer we got to the bubble, the tighter everyone played. With about 270 players left I was dealt pocket aces. I was in 150th spot, so I had no need to play the hand, but I just couldn't fold them either so I put in a modest raise. The guy right after me, who had a gigantic stack, moved all-in. I thought about calling - obviously I had the best hand- but thankfully I did a little risk-reward thinking: what would be the reward if I called and won? Nothing really - maybe the satisfaction of winning a hand of poker. Big deal. I was going to finish in the top 250 if I folded right here and 150th place and 42nd place get the same thing. What are the risks of calling and losing? AA can lose to any two random cards and if my all-in call back-fired I'd lose my ticket to the next tourney and the three hours I'd invested in this tournament would be for nothing. So, for the first time in my life I folded pocket aces before the flop.

About fifteen minutes later a fellow raised from early position and once again the big-stack bully moved all-in. Unlike me, the original raiser decided to call even though he had enough chips to cruise into the top 250. He turned over AA and the Big Bully turned over Q9o. The flop was Q 9 4, giving Big Bully top two pair and that holds up to knock the guy with aces out in 258th place.

Soon we are down to 250. I check to see how many of those early chip leaders made the cut and I see that six of them did - which is more than I expected. Still four guys blew themselves up for no reason except they couldn't stop playing aggressively!

So yes, the example is extreme but I hope it makes a point. Always factor in the risk-reward when you are making decisions, particularly in tournaments.

Tournament Strategy: Folding Your Way to Victory

It may sound silly but folding is sometimes the hardest thing to do, and this can be particularly true in tournaments.

I was playing an on-line free roll tournament yesterday with a massive 10,000 entrants. The top 250 players won entry into a tournament where real money could be won. This made the strategy interesting: whether you finished 1st or 250th, you got the same thing.

After a couple hours I was in 35th spot in a field with about 1,500 left. My strategy was just to try to keep my stack from shrinking and stay in the top 250 until the end. I picked on shorter stacks and avoided bigger stacks but the most important thing I did was that I folded. I folded a lot. As planned, by the time we got down to 250 players I was among them.

While I was folding my way to victory, I watched numerous others with much bigger stacks than mine play way too many hands and get knocked out. They played aggressively to build their stacks, but could not go into fold mode when doing so would guarantee they finish "in the money".

Although the tournament I'm describing is unique in it's pay out structure, I believe it illustrates an important point: In tournaments generally speaking, folding has power. Sure the all-in raise gets all the glory, but the humble fold is the move you need to perfect to become a great tournament player.

Tournament Strategy: Pay Out Structure

If you are good enough and lucky enough to make it into the money, you will notice a dramatic shift in the play of your opponents. It's like somebody flipped a switch. Suddenly players who wouldn't call a raise without the absolute nuts are going all in with king queen off suit. What the heck is going on?


Most people make it a goal to get into the money, so they play really tight as that goal gets closer. You knew this and you exploited their overly conservative play (see Tournament Strategy: Getting Near the Money ) and it is hoped you built a nice stack grabbing all those pots everyone else was too afraid to contest. Now that everyone else has achieved their goal and made it into the money, they immediately start playing much, much more aggressively. Their thinking is that they have gotten their buy-in back, so everything above that is gravy. Guys who have been tight suddenly start playing very loose.



In my last post, we examined the blind structure of tournaments. From the same on-line tournament we looked at then, let's look at the pay out structure. This tournament had 348 entrants, each of whom paid $2.25 to play. The pay out structure was:

Place Prize
1. $174
2. $111.36
3. $83.52
4. $64.38
5. $48.72
6. $34.80
7. $22.62
8. $17.20
9. $13.92
10-12. $8.70
13-15. $6.96
16-18. $5.22
19-27. $3.83
28-36. $3.13

To make it into the money players had to finish in the top 11%. In addition to the entry fee participants also have to invest their time. In our example tournament over two hours had elapsed before the field was down to 36 players. So why are so many players content to make it their goal to just finish in the money? In our example, when you subtract the entry fee the fellow who finished in 28th place out of a field of 348 players made a profit of 88 cents.

It should never be your goal to just make it into the money. You need to set your sites much higher to make playing in tournaments profitable. That is why you should immediately tighten up when every one else starts gambling. Once you make it into the money, the goal is to move up positions. When much of the field is gambling, you can sit back and let the smaller stacks knock each other out. When you get a good hand, you are much more likely to get paid off by someone playing looser than you.

Tournament Strategy: Blind Structure

When the word structure is used in relation to a poker tournament, it is referring to two things: the blind structure and the pay out structure. Let's take a look at blind structure today.


Unlike ring games, the blinds in a tournament continually increase in order to force the action. If the blinds didn't rise then a tournament could go on forever. The blind structure simply defines how long each level will be and states how much the blinds are at each level. Here is an example of a blind structure for an on-line tournament in which participants start out with $15,000 in tournament chips. In this particular structure each level lasted for ten minutes, which is typical of on-line tournaments. Levels typically last longer in real-life tournaments .

Level--Blinds--(Antes)
1 10/20
2 15/30
3 20/40
4 25/50
5 30/60
6 40/80
7 50/100
8 60/120
9 80/160
10 100/200
11 120/240 (25)
12 150/300 (25)
13 200/400 (50)
14 250/500 (50)
15 300/600 (75)
16 400/800 (100)
17 500/1,000 (125)
18 600/1,200 (150)
19 800/1,600 (200)
20 1,000/2,000 (250)

This particular tournament actually lasted into the 25th level but I got tired of typing at 20. Anyway, you get the idea.

Knowing the structure is important because it allows you to plan your strategy optimally. You might like to wait for great hands but if the blinds are coming up quickly you might not have that luxury. Any time your stack falls below 10 times the big blind you enter the "all-in" zone where you are just looking for a hand to gamble on. As the blinds rise that important threshold can sneak up you, so be aware of it.

I play tight in the early stages because the name of the game is survival. I don't take unnecessary chances. But as the blinds come up, taking more chances becomes necessary to keep a healthy stack.

Note that at the eleventh level of our example the ante comes into play. At only $25, this might not seem like much but with nine players this adds up to an additional $225 in the pot before the cards are even dealt. At level 10 the blinds total $300, but at level 11 the blinds plus antes total almost doubles to $585. This makes the pot much more worthwhile to win. If you have been cultivating a tight image to this point, now is the time to exploit that and start attacking.

Tournament Strategy: Getting Near the Money

In most tournaments the top ten percent of finishers are paid. These people are said to have finished "in the money." As you get closer to being in the money, play tends to tighten up considerably. People with small stacks are hoping they can hang on long enough and those with medium sized stacks don't want to make a big mistake with the money so near. This is the stage where if you have the courage to make some bold moves you can move up quite a few positions.

You have to be very careful when picking your spots. You do not want to tangle with a big stack here. You should have a good sense of who is desperate to make it into the money - these are the players who will be the easiest to bluff.

Because people are playing tighter than usual, a medium-sized raise here will have a similar effect that a large raise normally would, so this is a stage of the tournament where bluffing more is a good strategy. Don't be afraid of loosing your tight image - it is far more important to accumulate chips than to worry about image. In fact once you get in the money you want that maniac image.

If you do catch a big hand, play it exactly like you are running another bluff. If you change your betting pattern your opponents will notice and will know by the size of your bets if you are bluffing or not. Do the same thing whether you have A A or 7 2.

Don't be afraid to throw your hand away if someone plays back at you. Shrug it off. Forget about it. You only bet a modest amount anyway. If you are no longer getting any respect then it is more likely your legitimate hands will get paid off.

Pick your spots (your opponents) and attack.

Tournament Stretegy: Bluffing

I don't write a lot about bluffing, mainly because in a ring game you can make money without ever having to bluff, so really why bother? Most players, particularly new players, bluff way too much and I don't want to encourage that kind of reckless play by writing posts on bluffing.

However if you are going to do well in tournaments, then you have to use every trick in the book and that includes well timed bluffs. I don't recommend bluffing in the early stages of tournaments when pots are small and you don't yet have a feel for your opponents. There is a saying in poker that you can bluff a good player but you can't bluff a bad one, and I think there is a lot of truth to this. Spend those early stages observing your opponents and try to discern which ones can be bluffed and which ones can't. Play very tight poker, so that your table image will work in your favour when you start running a few bluffs in the middle or late rounds.

By the middle stages, your focus begins to shift from protecting your stack at all costs to risking a bit to accumulate more chips. If you can steal the blinds every now and then you will keep your stack from getting eaten away. When and how depends on your read of your opponents. I'm sorry to say that there is nothing you can read on a blog or in a book that will prepare you for every situation, your own read on your opponents is the most important thing to guide you. All I can do is give you some tips.

Pre-Flop Bluffing Tips:

• Don't try a bluff if someone has raised the pot before you. Your goal is to either steal the blinds outright or to see the flop against a single opponent. The size of your bet should be calculated to achieve these goals. If someone has raised before you, it is more than likely they will call your re-raise and you may get other callers who feel "priced in". Suddenly you are in a multi-way pot with bad cards. Not good.
• Don't always try to steal the blinds with a raise from the button or the cut-off (right of the button) positions. People steal the blinds from these positions so frequently that doing so too often yourself will send signals that you are bluffing. If you fold when everyone has passed to you on the button from time to time, it will make your steals seem more legitimate. Once in a blue moon, try raising from early position. It goes against all poker wisdom to bluff from early position, so if you make even a modest bet from there you should get a lot of respect - if your opponents are good players.

Post-Flop Bluffing tips:

• Don't bluff against two or more opponents. It is more than twice as unlikely to run a successful bluff against two people than it is against one. It is foolish.
• Don't bet too much when you bluff. A small bet, particularly against a good opponent, is often just as effective as a big bet. This is counter to a lot of people who say "go big or go home". I think if you go big with nothing in your hand, then you probably will be going home. Remember the rule: don't risk a lot to win a little.
• Don't bluff an idiot. Bad players just don't lay their hands down very easily. Which makes them fun to play against when you have a great hand but bad targets for your bluffs.

Post-Turn Bluffing Tips:

• My favourite place to bluff is on the turn - after my opponent and I checked after the flop. If I get called, then I shut down and don't put any more chips into the pot. If I get raised, I fold.

Post-River Bluffing Tips:

• Assuming you don't have a hand, the only way you make it to the river is if you and your opponent have been checking it down all the way, so it's pretty unlikely your opponent has anything. Go ahead and bet half the pot, more often than not you will take it.
  

Tournament Strategy: Avoiding Coin-Flips

In my post about playing in a tournament with a short stack, I said that you should look for a spot to try to double up. In other words, you should be prepared to go all in before the flop with hands that stand up well in coin-flip situations. When you are short stacked this makes sense, but too many players with healthy stacks make the mistake of letting their tournament fate ride on coin-flips. The most common situation is pocket queens against big slick - two premium hands that many players seem willing to go all in with no matter what the stage of a tournament. I used to do it myself but I've wised up.

Before you make a move involving most or all of your chips, do a risk assessment. What is the upside? You double up. In the middle stages of a tournament doubling your chips is great, but it doesn't automatically put you in the money. You gain a slight advantage, but what do you risk? You risk everything.

Once you are in the money, moving up positions can greatly increase the money you make. It's then that the upside justifies the gamble. Or, as I have said, when you are short stacked the "down side" - being knocked out of the tournament - is what will happen if you don't act, so you might as well try it. In the middle of a tournament, with an average sized stack, its just a bad gamble.

If you believe in your own skill as a poker player, you should feel confident in playing QQ or AK without going all in pre-flop with them. By the middle stages of the tournament you should have enough information on your opponents to play against them. By going all in pre-flop you are saying you would rather give your fate over to chance than rely on your skill to play the hand out. You won't win tournaments if you don't have more confidence in yourself that that.

Tournament Strategy: The Early Stages

In my last post I talked about relative chip value in tournament play. In the first rounds of a tournament the blinds are small, so this is the time to play speculative hands hoping to build your stack early, right?

Wrong!

The early levels of a tournament are when you should be playing your tightest poker. Your goal in these early stages is to gather information on your opponents. You do not want to gamble away even small amounts of money. If the tournament goes well, you will win big pots to build your stack. Don't worry about contesting a lot of small pots at the start. Save those chips to double up with later.

Doyle Brunson advises playing tighter in tournaments than in ring games because if you get busted in a ring game you can buy more chips. True, there are some re-buy tournaments, where people can go nuts trying to build a stack early knowing they can buy back in. Personally I just don't understand that structure and I won't give any advice on re-buy tournaments. For normal tournaments, protecting your stack is your first priority and building your stack is a secondary concern.

T.J. Cloutier was an old school road gambler who for many years lived in Houston Texas. He used to play regularly in a big cash game in Dallas but often had only enough money for one buy in - if he lost that, he was broke. As you might imagine, this situation taught T.J. how to play very, very tight poker. For example, while other players think AK is a great hand, calling it "big slick", T.J.'s name for AK is "walking back to Houston". To T.J. every Dallas game was like a tournament, so it is not surprising that he became one of the great tournament players with six World Series of Poker bracelets.

Sure there is a time for looser, more aggressive play in a tournament. That time is when everybody else is playing scared - not in the early stages when the pots are small and nobody is afraid to play them.

Tournament Strategy: Playing Short Stacked

If you have played much poker, you have probably heard the expression, "All you need is a chip and a chair." It is part of poker mythology that this expression was coined after the greatest comeback in the history of the World Series of Poker: The main event victory of Jack Strauss in 1982. It was early in the second day of the big game that year when Jack was dealt a hand he liked and pushed all his chips into the middle. He got one caller and lost the hand. As Jack got up to leave he discovered that hidden under his napkin was a $500 chip he missed, and since he had never actually said "all in" the tournament directors agreed he could continue to play with the single chip. Jack then went on an incredible rush and ended up winning the tournament.

Many tournament players just give up when they get far behind in their chip counts. It's like they no longer really believe they can win, so they just start playing mediocre cards hoping to get lucky. What you should do when you find yourself short stacked is conserve your chips because you are looking for a spot to double up. If you are down to $1000 and the big blind is $100, don't limp in with speculative hands like suited connectors or medium pairs because you will not want to go all-in with these hands if someone raises you. Even if you see the flop you most likely won't hit it and again you have to throw your hand away.

In ring games, chips have absolute value. A $100 chip is worth $100. In tournaments chips relative value. A $100 bet represents 10% of the stack of someone with only $1,000 in a tournament and should not be made with anything less than a premium hand, whereas to the tournament player with $20,000 a $100 bet is a threat to less than 1% of their stack, so it may be okay to take a chance with a range of speculative hands. As a short stack you can make this work to your favour by waiting to get a good hand to play, knowing a big stack might call you with a lesser hand because those chips are not worth as much to them.

The rule of thumb I've heard the professionals use is that once your stack is down to ten times the blinds (i.e. you have $1,500 and the blinds are 100/50) it is time to start looking for hands to go all in pre-flop with. By doing this one of three things will happen and two of them are good. (1) You get called and lose (bad). (2) You get called and win (good). (3) Everyone folds and you get the blinds (good).

What hands are good to go all-in with in this situation? Well, you can't be too picky but you definitely do not want to make your all in move with pocket 8's or lower. Even though your stack won't cripple anyone, in my experience people will only call a pre-flop all in with either a decent pocket pair or Ace with a face card. So by going in with small pairs you will either be called by a larger pair (which makes you a terrible underdog) or by the big ace, in which case it's a coin flip. So you will probably lose more often than you will win in this situation.

AK is the perfect hand to go all in with. If you get called by a weaker ace, then you are a big favourite. If you get called by a smaller pair, you still have nearly a 50% chance of hitting an ace or king by the river. The important point is that you will see all five board cards because you went all in. If you don't go all-in, then if you miss the flop (likely) you have a tough decision to make if you are raised. Better to just pot-commit yourself with the all-in.

Big pairs? Should the poker gods smile and deal you AA or KK, you may then want to play the odds that you will probably still be ahead after the flop. Do not go all in, but make the largest bet you think will be called. Then, depending on the texture of the flop and your opponents, you can decide to try to extract more money with a value bet or protect your lead and push them out.

QQ? JJ? 10-10? I'm usually all in pre-flop. I might not shove with 10-10 if I think I'll be up against two or more opponents because I'm probably up against three or more overcards, which makes me an underdog.

Of course this is very general advice. What you decide to play will depend a lot on your position, but what you must be thinking is that any hand good enough to play is good enough to go all in with at this point.

No matter how short stacked you are, never, never, never, never give up. I promise that if you commit yourself to being the best short-stack player you can possibly be you will achieve some amazing comebacks. Being a great short-stack player is the difference between being a losing tournament player over the course of your life and being a winner.

Tournaments are fun...and unprofitable.

Today's terms: Ring game, rake, bubble, coin-flip.

I like tournaments. Being a lover of fiction, I relate to their narrative arch. Tournaments have beginnings, middles and ends. They often have heroes (you) and villains (other people). Bravery, cowardice, chance and skill - all the regular dramatic elements of poker are set on a time-line. As the number of players dwindle, the layers of thought behind every decision increase. Bold moves, which might never be attempted in a ring game (the regular tables where players come and go and the blinds stay constant) may have sufficient up-side to be attempted when the stakes get high enough. In a tournament, although many might finish in the money, there is only one winner. If you have a strong competitive nature (and what poker player doesn't?) these survival-of-the-fittest contests are very attractive. But if you approach poker as a business, they don't make financial sense.

I dropped into a casino one morning, hoping to find bleary-eyed players who had been up all night, and instead found the poker room empty save for a lone employee. I asked when the games started up.

"Usually we don't get games going until around noon," she said. "But we have a tournament starting in half an hour."

I was itchy to play poker and didn't have the time to wait until noon, so I signed up for the tourney. It was a small affair - only 18 players were competing. Each of us paid an entry fee of $60 and only the top three got paid. I can't recall the exact pay-outs, but I think it was something like $380 for first, $260 for second and $145 for third. This structure is the first clue that tournaments don't make financial sense - the total prize pool was $785, whereas the casino took in $1080 in entry fees. Granted the casino has overhead to pay to run a tournament - most notably the have to pay the dealers - but I'm pretty sure that the $295 they kept is more than the they'd make in the rake ( a small amount taken out of the pots - this is how the casino makes money running the game) over the same length of time. The whole tourney just took less than four hours.

Anyway, I took my seat. We started out with $5,000 in tournament chips each, and the blinds started at $25/$50. I won't bore you with the details, but I played well and got a lot of good cards. By the first break I had the most chips at my table - exactly $14,000. Instead of being elated I felt a little depressed. I had sat at the table for 90 minutes and had nearly tripled my starting chips, and I had nothing to show for it. Sure I was a front-runner, but there was still fourteen people left in this thing. I had to out last eleven more players just to make any profit at all. I was depressed because I knew that if I had been playing a regular ring game and had gotten those same cards, I would have made at least $200 by now. Instead I had to play a lot more poker before I could even get a sniff at $200.

Yeah, yeah. Breaks' over. Stop crying and get back to the table.

The blinds had come up to $250/$125 - five times what we started at. With the blinds so high, the smaller stacks had to start looking for a spot to go all in - either double up or go home. So the number of players started dropping of quickly. My hot card streak continued, and I even managed to knock out two players myself. Sooner than I had expected we were down to ten players, and the two tables merged into one.

Looking at the stacks in front of the players from the other table, I see that I have more than anybody. Can I just cruise into the money by folding everything? Not quite. The blinds are $1000/$500 so even my $18,000 could get whittled away pretty fast. I decide to bluff a little, push the little guys around. Not nice, but you gotta do what you gotta do. Unfortunately a lady with a stack just a little smaller than mine has got the same idea, and what's more she's a much more effective bully than I am. She seems to be betting and raising everything! Does this woman know she's allowed to fold now and again? Still, I'm able to pick up enough small pots that my stack stays about the same.

We get down to four: The aggressive lady, a tight guy who I believe would love to just make it to third, a loose guy who is very short stacked, and yours truly. With one player still to go before we are "in the money", we are now "on the bubble". The next guy out bears the ignominy of being the "bubble boy". In the logic of poker, it is better to be the first guy knocked out of a tournament and get nothing than to sit at the table for hours only to get knocked out on the bubble and still get nothing. Mr. Tight suggests we all kick in $20 for the bubble to take, so that the bubble at least gets his or her entry fee back. This seems fair to me, so even though I'm unlikely to go out next I agree. That's $80 I've put into the tourney now.

A couple hands later I'm dealt AQ off-suit. Loosey Short Stack raises and I call and the flop comes 9h Qd 5s. Loosey goes all in, I make the no-brainer call. Loosey shows his K9 and says, "I had to go all-in. I had no choice," and really he didn't. The blinds wound have wiped him out. This doesn't make me feel sorry for him when he fails to improve on the turn or the river however. So long Loosey. Now I'm in the money with about the same number chips of chips as Lady Pushalot. Tighty is far back in third.

Next hand I get Q 10s, not a good hand normally but when you are down to three it's just fine. I raise, Tighty folds (of course) and Lady P. calls (of course). Flop is Kc 4d 5d. I missed, but what the hell, she probably missed too. I make a massive raise - about one third of my remaining chips. That should scare her!

She immediately goes all in.

Shit. I pretend to agonize over my position for a long time before folding. No sense letting on I had nothing right? I am pissed off though. Mad at myself. Mad that this lady showed no respect at all for my raise.

This anger leads to my demise a few hands later. I get dealt AJ off suit and Lady P. makes a very big raise ahead of me. A very ungentlemanly thought passes through my head and I decide to take my stand right here and announce all-in. Lady P. calls (of course). I show my hand and she shows 99. We are in the classic coin-flip situation; a pair vs. two over cards. She is a 52% favourite - close enough odds that this is called a coin-flip.

No Ace or Jack hit the board for me, and that's that. I finish third, go to the cage where I'm given $145. I subtract the $80 I put in and see that for my 3 1/2 hours of really good poker I've only made $65. Maybe I'm being a sore-head, but that kinda sucks.

One can never say how things would have gone if, in an alternate universe, I'd played a ring game. But in my guts I know I would have made much, much more.

Tournaments are fun. Making money is even more fun.