Final Table Misclick Hell

I've been enjoying my week off so far with plenty of MW3 during the afternoons and hitting the poker tables in the evening.I've been sticking to Mtt's with a few $15 180 Turbo Mtt's thrown in too.So far this month I've played 198 Mtt's and have bought in for between $200-$500 per night in total buy-ins.These range from $5 Hyper turbos to $55 Hot turbo Mtt's.

I've had a few deep runs and a whole lot of bad beats and lost flips at key times but overall I'm really enjoying the challenge of playing deeper stacked tourney poker.It's not like me to break my strict bankroll management rules and take shots, ( which is what I'm doing with my bankroll and my nightly buy-in totals)however it's quite exciting to be playing real poker ( instead of just push/fold) for decent money.

The other major difference in my mindset is that instead of having part of my roll put aside for bills I don't have any cashout plans and unless I go as low as $1500-$2k ( including the $600 I have on Party) there's really no need to get too worried about having a losing month or two.Even if that does happen I'll probably just step down a bit and keep grinding Mtt's.

I've also joined the Tourament Poker Edge training site ( after letting my Floattheturn membership expire) and I reckon just watching some of the pro-players Mtt vids has already helped improve my game.

I'm also reading "The Raisers Edge" written by a few top Mtt pro's and although it's a bit dry there's a lot of good stuff in it too.It advocates the LAG style of play and although I did try and get a bit more aggro I found I wasn't picking my spots well enough and at this stage I'm just not good enough yet at Mtt's to be able to play that way.

The book does actually say that with todays games becoming more and more aggressive ( more 3-4-5 betting than ever before etc) that a tighter approach may actually be more profitable.I will still raise to steal once a table oribit or two and I love 3 betting light against habbitual blind stealers.Overall though I'd see my style at moment as being a nitty with plenty up my sleeve!

Ok,to the post title and after a few small cashes last night I was down to a couple of tables.It was nearly 4am,I'd smoked about 12 joints by this point and apart from hourly 5 min breaks I'd been grinding 8-10 tables for about 9 hours.

I made the final table of a $13.50 Standard Speed Knock-out Tourney with over 600 starters and as ever the pay out structure was very top heavy.I'd already cursed after folding AK to a raise and a reraise.The re-raiser was a total nit and I knew he had something big despite it looking like a standard squeeze move.He did have QQ but I would have rivered the King and would have taken a huge chip lead.As it was someone shoved A3 into my AQ in a blind v blind battle and when I 3-bet another player with QK he called with QJ and my hand held to bring me right back into contention.

When we got down to three players the other two were quite weak and I really felt I was finally going to bink a Mtt.I started off being quite aggro and chipped up nicely before taking my foot off the gas a little to try and retain my fold equity against these slightly fishy players.

When the hand below came up I'd let "IcallyouAA" raise my big blind and get away with it twice in a row and with the other guy being quite short I felt it was time to 3-bet and try and take it down there and then.

What happened next kept me awake long after I'd gone to bed feeling completely exhausted.I've set up the bet slider short-cut buttons ( under Options/bet slider on Stars) to allow me to bet either 2.5bb,2.25bb or "Max" preflop.When "IcallyouAA" makes his standard min raise I wanted to make it slightly bigger than min raising him back and ended up mashing the 2.25 button then the max key and then tried to reduce the amount using the slider.

I thought I'd done this and then to my horror my screen showed I'd 3-bet most of my stack instead of to 84k.Of course the villain lived up to his name,snap called and although I kept my head together as best I could I ended up jamming into his AQ with two live cards a few orbits later for $656 which I suppose at least puts me back in the black for March.