That’s right…$15 bucks of tournament entry fee’s paid for my all my travel expenses for the trip I’m planning to Las Vegas in July. Not bad for a small timer such as myself. After a couple of weeks of limited play, I have really been trying over the past week and a half or so to get into more games and re-gain a comfort level with my game that had recently slipped away. <READMORE>

Having a limited amount of time to play each day because of a full-time job can really cut down on your decision making ability on the poker tables. For me personally, I would come home and maybe play a SNG or two an evening and/or maybe a tournament in there also. But I wasn’t playing very much for a couple of weeks and my results were showing it.

Because of this, I was really trying to force the action pretty hard and making really bad moves when I did play. I was pushing bad hands in pretty much every tournament I was playing because I knew that I was probably only going to be in that one tournament that night and wanted to make the most of it. As a result of overextending myself into pots this way, I would usually end up busting out pretty quick.

So last weekend I made a decision to get back to the basics. I decided that I wanted to focus entirely on SNG’s and not even worry about tournaments. I just wanted to work on getting my confidence back for a couple of days and then after that, start taking on tournaments once I felt better about what I was doing with the cards that I was dealt.

I went back to playing $5 and $10 6-10 person SNG’s instead of multi-table tournaments (MTT’s) and stuck to those for a good couple of days. As some of my friends can attest to, I would sometimes play two, three, or even four at a time all just trying to find my rhythm and regain some confidence about my game.

I feel that these are great starting grounds for anyone who feels down on their luck because it’s not a 3 or 4 hour investment of time like a MTT. If you lose because of some bonehead play you may have made you can fix it, learn from it, and turn right around and start another one within a matter of minutes.

So after doing those for a couple of days with a decent amount of success, I starting jumping back into MTT’s and I could tell right away that I was playing much better. I could just feel it. Even though I might not have cashed right away I just had a better sense about my game.

After the weekend I couldn’t go to sleep at all Sunday night and found myself still up at 3am that night. Really good for a guy that has to get up at 6am for work huh? I saw that a $10 turbo was getting ready to start so I jumped into it. It was a 1k guarantee but ended up getting 209 people which wasn’t bad for a 3am tourney. Well, I ended up outlasting everyone in that field and taking it down right at about 5:15ish…which gave me about an hour of sleep that night before work the next day (well…the same day actually).

After a couple of other minor hits and misses, I jumped into a little $5 tournament Friday night that ended up having a total of 621 people in it. When it started I was still feeling ok from having a so-so week but didn’t think too much of it because of the size of the starting field. So I just kept playing and playing…and after about 4 hours of solid poker and an instant message microphone tutorial from MrSneaky, I found myself at the final table in 4th place.

A huge hand came up with about 7 players left that was either going to put me in great shape or put me out. With the blinds super high at something like 8k/16k, I pick up 77 in 2nd position. The person in front of me min raised to 32k and I had to decide whether or not I want to re-raise or get rid of this middle pocket pair. Well after my 15 second buzzer went off and with MrSneaky asking me if I really wanted to risk my entire tournament and 4+ hours I play on pocket sevens, I re-raised all-in and get called by AK. A beautiful board full of blanks had me feeling great and moved me up a spot in the money as well. I couldn’t pull it out for the victory but managed to take 3rd place out of a field of 621 players. Needless to say, I was very happy with my performance considering where my confidence level was a week and a half prior.

On a side note, I have been to Las Vegas a handful of times before but never with my dad (KCBowler857). He and I love going there and have been wanting to plan a trip together for some time now. We already had our dates picked out so that we could go during the first few days of the WSOP main event and watch some of the action. We hadn’t booked it prior to this weekend…but thankfully all of that is taken care of now…all for $15 bucks.

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