Playing in the Professional Players Tour Tournament

While having breakfast with Thomas "Thunder" Keller at Commerce Casino, I gave him all of my strategies for destroying a table at the recent Professional Players Tour (PPT) tournament. You can imagine how thrilled I was when I finally found my seat and was sitting next to Thomas. I looked at all of the familiar faces at my table and realized that the field was much stronger than some of the past events I had played in. As an aside, I typically wear headphones when I play so that I don't get too involved in the table conversation. Why? I don't want to think about the table conversation instead of focusing on the game. For some reason, my iPod wasn't working after dropping it, and I was without music. As I started to play, I discovered that I had absolutely no focus at the table, and I chatted more than T.J. Cloutier and Annie Duke combined. I annoyed even myself at times.

Luckily for me, I had Thunder entertaining me, as well. We sat there and talked for hours, and once in a while we got involved in a small pot and lost it. It was a great pattern – talk for a while, play a hand, make a bad call, and lose a couple thousand in chips. At the PPT, when you go all in and get called, they stop the action, you wave a flag that reads "All in," and the TV crew comes over to commentate on the hand. I was fortunate that I always had a decent hand when the cameras were on me, and they held up each time, until the final hand.

Remember, in poker, when you have an overpair against an underpair, you don't always win (unless your last name is Negreanu). I eventually lost, and my freeroll was over. Whenever I bust out of an event, I try to avoid all contact with those who are still playing, and I sneak out of the room to avoid having to tell a bad-beat story or a bad-play story. Well, things are a little different at the PPT. They give you a pink slip (literally), as if you were cut from baseball tryouts, and make you go to a desk and write down how the final hand played out. Even though it is torture, it serves a purpose. The PPT is accumulating statistics for their television show.

As I walked out of the room, it occurred to me that I have a terrible record in freerolls, and maybe this one had nothing to do with my iPod breaking. For me to play my best game, it needs to sting a little when I lose. I personally like the idea of having to put up a little cash to play, with the PPT putting up the rest. That way, the prize pools will be larger, and if I lose, I won't sit there and say, "Who cares, it was a free buy-in."