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It would seem that I was excessively optimistic with regard to today’s freeroll tournament. The players were predictibly terrible. The mixture of games was predicitibly advantageous. However, I naiively assumed that the tournament structure was such that it would give us a chance to actually play poker. Oh how stupidly idealistic I have been.

The structure gave us all 700 chips to start and began with 25-50 limit holdem. The blinds then doubled every twenty minutes. At each level change we would also change games. The layout was as follows:

level 1 : 25/50 limit holdem with 25/25 blinds
level 2 : 50/100 limit omaha with 25/50 blinds
level 3 : 100/200 limit holdem with 50/100 blinds
level 4 : no-limit holdem with 100/200 blinds
level 5 : no-limit omaha with 200/400 blinds

With this ridiculous structure they expected to cut a field of 1000 players down to 125 in less than two hours. Seeing the stupendously bad blind escalation, my goal changed from “last until day 2″ to “last until level 5″. I just wanted to get a chance to play some no-limit omaha (awesome).

I hit the ground running, firing on all cylinders and surprisingly won 5 of the first 5 hands that I played. Understanding the enormous disadvantage given us by the tournament structure I adopted a simple strategy, and one that proved highly effective. Under no circumstances would I ever limp into a pot. If the action was folded to me in middle position or later I would ALWAYS raise. I stopped even looking at my cards. If they folded, I raised. No matter what came out on the flop I would bet. Though obviously a worthless strategy most any other time, in today’s tournament it seemed the perfect recipe. With a table full of weak players I could bet and raise with the expectation of winning the hand outright most of the time – which I did. Unless they had a big hand nobody seemed willing to play against me. As such, in the very first level I doubled my starting chips without needing to show down my hand more than once or twice.

In the second level, the omaha round, my strategy accelerated. It became very obvious early on which players at my table knew how to play the game and which did not. Other than myself I only gave credit to one other player. As such, of the ten hands we played during level 2 (twenty minute levels meant we were lucky to get in one complete orbit of the blinds before changing games), I raised five of them. Had I not bricked out on one board where I flopped 20 outs to the nuts, I would have doubled up yet again during level two.

Level three switched back to holdem. Even though the rest of the table was clearly aware of my hyper-aggressive strategy they proved unwilling to stop me. I added another 1000 chips to my stack without ever turning over my cards.

Going into level 4, the no-limit round, I held 2200 chips. My chip stack was easily the largest at the table and I would bet was in the top 5% of the room. Unfortunately, none of that mattered. With the newly doubled 100-200 blinds my ‘monster stack’ amounted to only ten big blinds. In most tournaments a player with ten big blinds is considered to be on life support. On the third hand of level four I looked down to find Ace-Queen. Action folded around to me and I raised up to 500. The big blind was the only player to call. On a flop of 4 – 6 – 9 my opponent checked to me so I made a continuation bet of 500, which he called. The turn brought an eight and my opponent checked again. I checked behind him. The river card was a queen and the player in the blind tossed out 500. I figured that I was 50-50 to have the best hand, but the 2000 chips in the middle of the table were far too valuable to give up so I made the reluctant call. He turned over 6-8 offsuit for two pair and took down the pot. That big loss left me with only 700 chips (still more than half the players at the table). Two hands later I found myself in the big blind with Q-2 offsuit. A player made it 800 to go preflop and I threw my cards away. Now I’m down to 500. In the small blind I was happy to see that two other players limped into the pot, allowing me to complete my blind with a respectable 10-8 offsuit. I am left with only 300 chips behind. The flop falls K – 10 – 7 and I move all in, tossing my last three chips onto the felt. Everyone folds around to the last limper, the same guy who had just beaten my AQ. He called my 300 and turned over 10-7 offsuit for two pair. (I was a little upset that he had voluntarily put money into the pot with that hand, just as I was upset he had called my earlier raise with 6-8 offsuit.) The turn and river brought no help and I left the game, collected my consolation $100, and walked out the door.

And that was that. I went from a tournament chip lead to the rail in only two hands: just about the only two hands that I lost all day. Oh well. I’m not at all upset about the day’s result. Going into the event I quickly made peace with the uber-crappy blind structure. Rather than worrying about the money I instead focused on just trying to have a good time. It made me happy to raise every hand and watch the old men at my table get upset. It made me happy to explain, to several people at my table, that even though I was holding K-Q-J-9 and the board read 2-5-6-7-8 I did not actually have a straight.

“But you have a nine,” one man exclaimed. “That makes a straight.”
“No. Actually I have king high.”
“Wha…??”
“Just trust me. I have king high.”

My only regret is that I didn’t get to play no-limit omaha.