I hate tournaments

And yes, I've read Harrington's book, and I plan on reading it a second time. And no, this isn't a case of sour grapes, although if I was winning tournaments with regularity, I'd probably like them a bit more, I admit.

But all that aside, I still hate tournaments. While skill is a huge factor in these, there's just so much more luck involved. Someone calls your AK for a large raise with AQ and they either take you out, or they make enough of a dent in your chipstack that you can't recover. All your mistakes are magnified as well - I donked off some chips on a stupid turn bluff and was crippled as well; in a cash game you can do that and still be able to recover - the ability to reach into your pocket allows you to even make money off your mistakes.

I played two tourneys this weekend, in the first, I was by far in the top tier of players - there were only two out there as good or as better as I am, and of course I run into someone who falls in love with his AQ and I'm out in 11th place. And I'm mad, because this guy is a poor player, he's been that way all night, and I would be able to take much more advantage of that if we were playing a ring game. In fact, my friend Adam (who also got kicked out) said to me as I was venting, "It's early, you should just go to the casino and make your money back in a ring game."

Which, of course, I did, and I brought Adam and I took home 10x the buyin for the tournament, so I made my money back and then some.

Then I played in the WPBT satellite last night, and again, got AhKd to a Ad 4d 4c flop, and bet pot (after a decent preflop raise of 4x the blinds), and got one caller. The turn, Jd. I've got the nut flush redraw and the guy is definitely not on a 4 as he hesitated enough after the call to make that clear. I bet pot again, which is most of my stack, he goes all in for $100, and I have to call.

Of course, he has AJo and I don't get any help, and am crippled with $70. I manage to hang on for a while, but eventually get knocked out with KJo on the button (I limped in, hit top pair on a J T 8 flop), got bet into, raised pot, got a hesitating call, pushed in on the turn since I knew I was good, and got called by T9o and the river was of course a 9 and IGHN.

Yes, I could have bet all in on the turn which probably would have won me the pot, but I hated my K.

Give me a cash game any day. I never have to play a short stack in a ring game, and there's so much less luck involved IMO, and even if you make a mistake, you can use that to your advantage later in the game - your opponents will remember your mistakes and you can use that to get paid off.

But maybe I'm just full of sour grapes. Or maybe I'm just cranky because I woke up at 5 am and couldn't go back to sleep and it took me 2 hours to get out the door this morning because my head is not fully screwed on until 7 am.