Another first: Tournament poker
Last Friday I entered my first live Poker tournament, a No Limit Hold’em sponsored by a group called NJ Free Poker. They hold free tournaments where people who get to the final table would get points and the top 200 at the end of the season would have a playoff and the winner would get a sponsorship to a WSOP (World Series of Poker) or a WPT (World Poker Tour) event.
I went with my cousin Erwin and we were just hoping to do well and also to experience live tournament style poker. There normally are around 2-3 tournaments on a given night with around 30-60 players in a tourney. There were some good players, a lot of regulars and a few newbies like us.
At first it was pretty intimidating as you got all these characters there and I admit it took me a while to get my groove. I mean I was trying to study my opponents, study my cards, thinking of what I should be doing, it’s a bit too much even for a genius such as me..Ü I did pretty well, meaning I did good enough based on my expectations, not good enough for me to be satisfied. What is important is that I know where I made mistakes and from there try to learn from them. (Lesson number 1: It’s bad to go all-in against AA).
Two days later, we went to another tournament with the hopes of doing better. There were less people on this one, maybe 30-40 only. And I did! I reached the final table (and getting points in the process) and I practically did it by winning 1 hand.Ü I eventually finished 9th place (going up against another monster hand) but at least I’m in the scoring column. Erwin did better by winning the 1st tourney.
I’m currently around 400th-500th place (with Erwin already in the Top 200 since he has placed 3 times out of 4) so I need to work on my skills in order to climb up the ranks. We plan to join the Sunday tourn ey again and hope we do well again. I will tell you about it next time if it goes well. If not, I don’t wanna talk about it, so don’t ask.
PS. You can check out their site at njfreepoker.com
