Deja Vu All Over Again

Wednesday and Friday night poker were deja vu for me.  Both nights I was asked to deal table #2 while the final table dealer was Carl Jr.  Both nights I made the final table with a short stack, and both nights I ended up with a micro stack all-in, Wednesday with a single blind in the BB, Friday with 1.3 BB's under the gun.  Also I was totally card dead on the final table (thanks Carl) both times.  I didn't bother looking at my cards the first night as I had only one blind , Friday I limped in for $600 with only $200 behind under the gun with A/6.  Figured it would probably be the best hand I would see, and by limping encourage more limping, or better yet some limps then a big raise that blows the other hands out.  No such luck.  My final hand Wed. was 6/8 and a 9 on the river would have made a straight for me.

The essential problem is one that Ray Zee so eloquently explained to me recently, "You let yourself get too short stacked".  Gee, do ya think?  How does this repeatedly happen?  Well, for one, you have to survive to get to the final table.  Sometimes that means laying a hand down after investing a lot of chips, sometimes it means you have lost a big hand just prior to the final table, but were left a few pitiful chips.  And, sometimes it means that you just never get an opportunity to play a hand due to prior action, lousy cards, etc.  I have always tried to be "seat committed" rather than "pot committed" as have experienced massive comebacks with almost no chips.

There is an excellent book about playing turbos, "The Poker Tourament Formula", it has some flawed ideas but the main issue of aggression before getting too short stacked is a critical concept.  One of the key ideas is that you must identify what is a turbo tournament and how fast it really is.  The faster the tournament, the more luck figures into the outcomes and the more you must gamble.