5th out of 41. 1st out of 45. 7th out of 44. We are three months in to the tournament league now and I've managed 3 final tables and 2 cashes, the aforementioned 7th place finish from last night being the only non-cash. Generally the final 6 players pitch in $10 each (tourney buy-in is $50) to go towards the bubble boy in 6th place, so I guess finishing in 7th makes me the double-bubble boy, and also $50 less rich.
Last night's tournament also had a key structure change - the addition of antes starting at level 5, which the host implemented to help speed the game up. The previous month's tournament, which I won, took us to 2:30 in the morning. Last night I busted out around 1:30 with 6 players remaining, so I'm not too certain just how much this changed the length of the game. It did however make being completely card dead for the last hour or so extremely painful as my average stack of 55k or so dwindled down to only a few big blinds as the blinds went from 2k/4k/500 (ante) to 3k/6k/500 then 4k/8k/1k. Ouch! There were no decent cards coming to do anything with, and not even a good spot to squeeze or steal blinds. It was a whimper of a finish when I had to open shove my J4s into the big blind, who called with A6o and dealt the final blow.
Overall, I was pretty satisfied with my play, and I certainly can't complain about going 3 for 3 now with final tables. I'm kind of hoping the host changes the structure back and gets rid of the antes though. Not just because I can be a nitty player and like to conserve chips in the mid-late stages when I'm not catching cards, but because it did not seem to make that much of a difference in the length of the game. Mostly, it seems to just make the final stages of the tournament, when maximizing your payout is critical, all about who catches cards and gets lucky. Personally, I prefer the challenge of deeper stacks going at it rather than the majority of players at a table being in shove-or-fold mode. I guess we'll see what happens next month. Whatever the structure is though, let's hope I can keep the big finishes coming and stay on top of the leaderboard.
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