Tournamental

Question: Have you ever played (or even heard of anyone playing) Hold ‘Em Hi-Lo? I only ask because it is one of the games for which twodimes.net/poker offers statistical hand-crunching.

I’m writing this post just to mention that I have started playing a few multi-table tournaments again. I’m only playing the smallest ones my site runs, $3 or $5 entry generally, although I did talk myself into playing a $1 event on one occasion because there was no ‘juice’. Generally 200 to 300 entrants in these, and I have been following my usual pattern of getting deep without really troubling the scorers. I’ve probably played six tourneys, and cashed once – 16th place out of 220 or so for a tiny (and I mean tiny) profit. I ran AJ into AK twice to exit that one. Still yet to make a final table online, which is irritating as I have made a number of ‘semi-finals’.

Anyway, I have been enjoying playing them, which is the main reason I do it since I don’t view them as profitable. I ought to get a decent prize out of one sooner or later though, because at that low level there are so many truly, truly awful players and the field is decimated inside an hour. In fact I think I came 16th that time without bluffing even once.

Probably my best shot at the final table came to an end when I had a real nice stack in the latter stages, raised AK quite big after several limpers, and got called by the only larger stack at the table. The flop came AKT, he checked and I bet enough to pot-commit myself (mistake?). He raised me all-in, and I called. I figured him for a biggish Ace or King, maybe even the same hand as me, since I felt he would have re-raised pre-flop with AA or KK. He flipped over TT and I didn’t hit any of my few outs.

I didn’t enjoy my fifteen minutes last night either, when my limp with pocket Kings attracted a pre-flop all-in from pocket Queens, which hit a Queen on the turn. But overall, tournament poker is fun and I’ll keep playing a few in the background to my cash games, I think.