A Chip and a Virtual Chair

This past Friday night I played in a bounty tournament on UltimateBet.com. For those of you who don’t know, in a bounty tournament, part of your buy-in goes to the prize pool and part of it becomes a “bounty” on your head; whoever knocks you out gets your bounty. This particular tournament was a $25 buy-in ($20 to the prize pool and $5 bounty). I really like the idea of having a bounty because it means you don’t even have to make the money to earn your buy-in back. It also slightly alters the style of play. People are more likely to call your all-in, knowing that if they knock you out it’s money in their pocket.

Anyway, I started playing and I always play rather conservative in the first several rounds of a tournament because there are so many players that play a lot of hands simply because the blinds are cheap. If most of my table is playing loose, I tend to play tighter. So, I expected to not play many hands. I did not expect, however, to have such a long stretch of bad cards. I think in the first 2 hours I played 5 hands. It was horrible.

A couple times I had medium strength hands (AT, A9, QJs, 22, 33, etc.) that I would have liked to see a flop with, but every time I limped in or made a 2x the BB raise, I was raised or re-raised. It was the worst run of cards I have had in a long time. I eventually got down to only a single BB in chips left. I had the button, so I knew that one of the next 9 hands would be my all-in. I don’t remember what I played, but I tripled up. So, now I had to make another move very soon. Well, I did and it faired well for me. I was able to stay alive long enough to make the money. Out of 365 entries, 40 players made the money. When we hit 40 players I gave a big sigh of relief. I did it! I had the least amount of chips out of anyone in the tournament, but I was still here and I was walking away with at least something.

At this point in the tournament something changed. It was a combination of a couple things. First of all, I started to get a few hands now and then. I got TT, AK, AQ, 88, etc. I also loosened up my play quite a bit because the fear of being knocked out before the money was gone.

So, the end of the story is that when we got down to the final table I found myself in 2nd chip position and I was able to keep that position until we got down to heads-up play! I couldn’t believe it! It was after 11pm and I had been playing for over 4 hours so I was a bit tired and I didn’t play a very good heads-up game. I ended up getting 2nd place! It was my biggest cash in any tournament by far and probably my biggest accomplishment in poker. Not only did I get 2nd out of 365, but I did it coming back from just having a chip and a virtual chair :)