TEAMMATE BONUS

By busting out of the Five Diamond Classic before the payout structure, I became eligible for the Teammate Bonus, which pays me and my fellow losers based on the performance of those players who did make the money. We ended up sharing a prize pool which gave us each $1300 worth of tournament tickets at PokerRoom.

I have been keeping track of everything I play so far this year and I will do some statistical analysis at the end of each month and post here at The Nuts. I can already see that I am losing money in tournaments. I paid over $600 in entries on Saturday alone and failed to make the money even once. Not only that, but I was regularly finishing in the bottom half of entrants. That is not acceptable.

I've got to shore up my tournament game, and I think the way to do that is to play them less often. I have been getting back into Limit Hold'em and even some Limit Omaha H/L. I've been showing decent results so far in January. I'm going to see if I can earn my tournament money in the cash games, and target certain events and play them tighter than I have been playing lately. I would also like to keep working my way up the limits too, so that I will never want for cash as I chase the big tournament paydays. Right now I am playing $5/10 and $10/20, mostly short-handed. I will go to the full tables when I move up. I'm going to mix in some No Limit too, but I need to be paying better attention on those days. Limit is something I can play while perusing email or watching a movie.

I've had some success and I am definitely a winning player overall, but because of Monaco, people have an impression of me that I am some kind of major player, when in fact, I am still improving my game, testing out different strategies, and always gaining experience. I am getting better and I am sure there will be other paydays, but I'm not going to get them by wishing for them - I need to improve my consistency, refine my judgment, and perfect my patience, just like anyone. Success will follow, I have little doubt. I'm going to use my Bonus tickets for most of the next events I play. I want to see some cashes before I start putting my hard earned money back into the $100+ tournaments. I plan on playing a couple live events in the weeks ahead at Commerce, so I want to be fresh for those.