Another MTT Victory

"I am the best limit tournament player I
know."

DuggleBogey

This is a quote I actually said about myself on the forum at PokerSourceOnline. It's a bit misleading, since I'm the only person I actually know who plays limit tournaments. All my friends play NL exclusively, except maybe KingLucky who plays stud and omaha tournaments too. But he hates limit. That's what everyone says. "I hate limit tournaments."

I posted before about how usually a person hates a game because they are not very good at it. There's more to hating limit than not being good at it. You can be good at limit and hate it too. Because it's less exciting than NL, or because it requires patience. A LOT of poker players are action junkies. I wouldn't say that all bad poker players are action junkies, but I would say that all action junkies are bad poker players. Patience is not the first virtue you are likely to find in a roomfull of poker lovers.

Limit poker is all about patience. It's tough to put you off your tough hands with raises, so if you have the patience to let the good hands come, you can make it very far into a limit tourney. Sure you need luck to win, just like every poker tournament, but you can wait longer for the luck to arrive in limit. It also helps when your opponents play poorly.

I got to the final table out of 236 players in dead last place, just over T12,000 in chips. The blinds were 1500/3000, and I was next on the BB. When you are short stacked in a limit tourney, you usually have to make a pre-flop commitment to play a hand all the way no matter what flops. I got 99 and made that commitment. I raised to 6000 when 6 or 7 limped, and they all called. I prayed for a 9, but instead got a flop of 667, two clubs. I checked, hoping to get a lot of players to come in. A couple did, when the chip leader raised to 6000. I re-raised what I had left, and everyone folded. He was on a draw with JTc.

This is a huge mistake on his part. He basically isolated the all-in player when he was on a draw. No club came and no Jack or Ten came, so he lost a pretty huge pot to me. He could afford the chips so that wasn't the problem. The problem is an ace came on the river and I'm sure one of the other players had one. He had a chance to knock out a player and improve everyone's take, and he decided to bluff them out of the hand. And you never know who you are letting back into the game when you do this. He let (modesty aside) the best player in the tournament back into the game. His punishment for this error? From an overwhelming chip lead, I knocked him out 4th.

With over 40K I soon took over the table and got to heads up, quickly increasing my lead to 210,000 chips against 20,000. I am a heads up DEMON lately. It helps that I have been a rock for the last hour and hopefully that image lingers in the mind of the opponent as I raise, raise, raise. Judiciously showing a pair of Kings here and a pair of aces there, I want him to think I am still a rock on an incredible card rush. I'm not showing the 42s he folded to when I raised pre-flop. When I finally won a huge pot when I made two pair on the river with my 23o, and rivered a straight with 57 after flopping OESD, it's too late for him to recover. I had the 10 to 1 lead at the fourth break, and it was over three hands later when the board showed four diamonds, and my Kd trumped his 9d.

The tournament took a total of four hours and eighteen minutes. You are going to get a lot of good hands in 4:18. If you have the patience to wait for them, you can do some serious damage.