None other than yours truly!
After 11 games, I finally managed to win our poker league's 4th regular season last night. Week 9 I finished 6th (of 13), week 10 I finished 3rd (of 11), and week 11 I finished 3rd (of 14). My total chip stack going into this Saturday's main event is 60,500. I'm over 10,000 chips ahead of 2nd place, 16,000 ahead of 3rd and 4th, and the rest are 20,000-40,000 behind me. So basically, I'm in pretty good shape.
On top of making a pretty healthy regular season profit of $250 over 11 games, I won another $50 prize for finishing first place overall. $300 over 11 games is roughly $30 profit per game. That's not so great when you break it down hourly (each game is about 4 hours), but at least I can consider myself a "winning" player.
Our main event takes place this Saturday. We've been collecting $5 per player per regular season game in a side pot for this game and now we're up to $700 total prize money. To beef that up even more, there's an additional $30 buy-in to play the main event and we've got 11 people confirmed so far, which brings our grand total up to $1030.
If we split that 3 ways, the payouts will be $530 for 1st, $300 for 2nd, and $200 for 3rd.
I feel pretty confident in my chances, but I can't ignore the fact that the regular season champion has never won a main event; even with a commanding chip lead. I won last season and only managed to finish 3rd in the main event (out of 18). It was a cash, but still...
I really don't want to change what's been working for me all season long. That said, the main event is a different kind of monster because the blinds are 33% longer and everyone starts with vastly different stack sizes. And of course the stakes are a lot higher, so people tend to bring their A-game.
The short stacks are generally looking for a double-up and putting pressure on the big stacks. The big stacks are often a lot more loose with their money trying to bully people around but sometimes they tighten right up, afraid to take reasonable risks. Even though you're starting at 100-200 blinds, those early pots tend to get big due to the larger amount of chips in play than in a normal game. A typical raise is 3x the big blind. These main event raises are usually 4-6x the big blind.
The dynamic is just much different and you need to shift your gears properly or you'll be left in the dust. While I'm mentally preparing myself for the challenges ahead, I'm not formulating much of a gameplan because I want to remain flexible to whatever comes my way.
About the only thing I'm going to try to avoid is bleeding away my chip lead early because I feel like gambling. I've seen it happen too many times and it just doesn't work well for chip leaders in our main events. Wish me luck! :)
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