Vacation Plans and Post-Tourney Thoughts

I'll be heading further south tomorrow, visiting the 'rents in Florida for the remainder of the week. I'm not anticipating having fun on the probable 12-hour drive, but luckily for me, my kids are superb travelers. Hey, who wouldn't be when you can watch whatever DVD you want or play the Game Cube from the comfort of the back seat in the minivan.

Also luckily for me, there is a dog track not far from my parents' place that actually has a legal card room. Supposedly, each Thursday and Saturday this summer there is a $45 hold 'em tournament scheduled. My dad likes to play and hopefully I can convince him to enter along with me. Should I be able to, I'll do my best to post a decent report. At a minimum, if I don't get to participate, I'll for sure get to play some $1/$2 games there on one of the other evenings.

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I've re-read my tourney report below a few times and have come to the following conclusion: I wish I could start the final table over again. I grant the fact that I was 2nd shortest stack, only having about 8x the big blind, but pushing all-in in late position w/A,7 when there were already 4 limpers was undoubtedly a bad move.

I had just made the transition from being severely shortstacked to just a bit shortstacked. But I didn't change my behavior to correspond to my stack size, nor realize the fact that at this point of the tournament, the payouts began to increase in size quite steadily.

This is no doubt my biggest weakness in tournament play. It's what I am going to call the transitional phase where your strategy must change due to your tournament status change. I commonly see this in myself happening at or near the bubble or near the final table.

A co-worker suggested to me once to force myself into a break, to kind of reset my brain a bit. Even if it means missing a couple of hands, getting up and walking around a bit may help me transition into the next phase of the tournament without any major mistakes.

Oh well, live and learn. I'll miss this weekend's $5 MTT's, but may be able to participate in one soon after.