Feb. 18 2007 Winning Poker Tournament Report #1 of 2

I'm going to split my tournament report into two parts. I'm going to use a lot of jargon, so if you're not a regular player, you might not get it. The second half will be posted Saturday. I am eager for skilled criticism of my play.

At noon on Sunday I entered an open tournament on PokerStars. It was a $5 tournament (plus $0.50 fee to the house) with 1638 players. I've entered a number of these low-stakes tournaments before and finished about even money, which is to say in the top 20%. It's not hard at all, given I play quite conservatively and many players are wild, because they are bad and/or aren't invested in the tournament. My goal this time, as always, was to learn and have fun.

6 1/4 hours later, I was dead-even heads up and agreed to split the top two places with my opponent. Top prizes were about $1400 and $900, so I got $1176. As a casual "student of the game" this was my biggest single-day payout ever. It also makes me a lifetime winner, which I'm happy about. I suppose for many players this is nothing, and the money isn't a big deal, but for me emotionally this was a big win.

On Saturday I'll post a (significant) hand-for-hand analysis, but today I wanted to talk about how the tournament went in general.

The Tournament in Essay Form
It started out immediately well, with me doubling up twice and winning a couple other key hands, to move me from $1500 to $10k. Then I got shifted to a very tough table--the tightest I have ever seen online. There were two players with a VP$IP around 22-25. Everyone else (including yours truly) was 16 or below. Only about 1/3 of hands were seeing flops. "Fold to the raiser" was the theme of the day.

Despite the field, I almost immediately doubled up to $20K when I flopped nut flush from the big blind against an aggressor. Then I lost about $7K in a difficult hand which I and some friends have been kicking around the Internet ever since (more on Saturday). At $14K and still near the top of the heap, I had even worse luck. I was shifted to a table with the #1 and #3 players. I couldn't find purchase and for a long time barely held on.

I grew slowly but steadily before being crippled down to about $50K, putting me near the bottom with about 100 players. Then suddenly I went all in and doubled up with AK vs AJ. Incredibly, I misread the board and thought I'd been eliminated. Good thing I didn't run too fast!

I floated for a long time after that until, just a couple seats short of final table, I quadrupled with two good hands (one suck out). That put me in first shortly after the table convened. There were big swings after that, but those big hands were really all she wrote.

Some Interesting Stats

I saw a total of 478 hands. At the end both my opponent and I sat out for about 20 hands waiting for the arbiter to come split the prize pool. Other than that, I actually played virtually every hand. I entered the pot 109 times, which sounds large, but was skewed up by the super-aggressive final 100 hands -- 38 of my hands were blind steals.

Thus my total VP$IP was a high 22.80%. My preflop raise was 15.06%. When I entered a pot, I eventually won 54% of the time. I won almost exactly 2/3 of my showdowns.

Ok, I ought to have seen each pair about twice. In fact I ran very rich this tournament, seeing AA twice, KK three times, JJ three times, and QQ six (!!) times. Other hands ran near average. I did get one hand nearly twice as much as any other: 14 times. That hand? 2-7 off!! To quote a friend, "That proves they're cheating."

The hands than won and lost for me paint an interesting picture. Among my top 15 winning (meaning BB/hand) hands were (most to not as much):
AJs, 88, AQo, KJs, AJo, AKs, KK, AA, QQ, AKo

Among my bottom 11 (worst to less worse):
ATo, JJ, KQs, 33, 76s, QTo, QJs, KJo

And remember, we're talking my biggest losers here. That's sure a big lesson to me about getting in with less than premium hands (except for the jacks).

Okay, that's it until my hand-for-hand on Saturday. I'd really love to hear what any skilled poker players have to say about my game.