Tokens Tokens Tokens!

It's been an inauspicious 50NL kick-off. Lost almost a full buy-in with AA when my opponent's open-ended straight draw turned into a runner-runner backdoor flush. After firing two barrels and having my opponent call both, he led into me for about 60% of the pot on the river. I don't know a lot of players who call two streets OOP and then lead out on the river without a hand that beats an overpair, but I couldn't get away. Lost another buy-in when I made a super donkey call - I 3-bet PF with AKo, and got a 4-bet all-in. It's pretty inexcusable to be calling here without any knowledge of my opponent. But I did, and he had AA. These types of mistakes are more costly now.

I've been mixing in some 2-table, $8-$0.8 buy-in Turbo tourneys, which pay a $26 token to the final 5 players, and $14 to #6. I've had some success in these in the past, so I decided I try a little level-up challenge with them. I'm going to play 10, try to earn as many $26 tokens as I can, and then turn around and use the $26 tokens to try to earn $75 tokens, in tourneys of the same format. If I end up with any $75 tokens, I'll use those in SNGs and try to turn it back into cash. The first level tourneys are pretty soft, and I don't expect the level 2 tourneys to be much harder.

So far I've played 4.

Tourney 1: Lost a big chunk of my stack on the following hand... I pick up AQ UTG with blinds at 25-50. I make a pot-sized raise to 175. Only the CO calls. Flop comes K-x-x. I C-bet for 300, opponent calls. Check-check on a blank turn. River is another blank, I check, opponent bets, I fold. Boom, I've lost 30% of my stack. I didn't pick up much else to play with and busted out after a short stack push. That's the problem with these turbo tourneys...not much room for play. The takeaway is probably that my PF raise should have been smaller, especially from UTG. I could probably have raised to 80-90 there and gotten the same action. Then my C-bet is only somewhere around 150, and I end up losing almost half as much as I did.

Tourney 2: Doubled up early on, then didn't pick up much to play with and laid low until it got down to the final table. Found myself in an interesting spot with 7 players left. After a big hand between two players, one player was knocked down to 330 in chips. The blinds were at 150-300, and I had a stack of ~1600. My M(**) is 3 here, so in a typical tourney, I'm pushing all-in PF in an unraised pot with almost any 2 cards. But on the money bubble, with the super-flat structure of these token tourneys, I was in an exceptional situation. One hand later, I pick up AJo in MP. UTG min-raises to 600, and it's folded around to me. Now I would insta-push here in a normal tourney structure with an M this low. But with one guy sitting so close to the bust point, I had a tough decision. Or maybe it isn't tough at all. Any thoughts? I ended up folding, and the super-shortie busted out a few hands later. But I didn't get any good chances to shove until my PF fold equity was virtually nil, so I busted out shortly thereafter in 6th place, taking down $14 and no token.

Tourney 3: Lost a huge pot when I tried to resteal from the SB with KQs. When the button pushed, it was only 600 more to call, so I did, and lost to AJ. Restealing is quite risky when the blinds are moving up as fast as they do in these tourneys. After pushing and stealing the blinds a few times (this is where you can really get an edge in these turbo tourneys), I won an all-in with AJ>A6 to get back over 2000 chips. Got blinded quickly down to 1500, but then won another all-in with AQ>AJ. This put me at 4000, and I was basically able to sit it out until we got down to 5. First token won.

Tourney 4: Not much action early. With the blinds creeping up to 120-240, I made a steal attempt from the button with Qh9h, for 600. BB pushes for 775 more. A tough spot, but I thought the odds were probably right, and if I lost I would have 350 chips left. I call, BB turned up K7, flop came K high, but I river a flush. That put me at 3000. I waited until we were down to 7 to make another move, which I did with KJ, pushing for 2200 (500-1000 blinds). Got one call from an AJ, but KJ>AJ in this spot. After that, it was a short amount of time before I had another token.

So, after 4, 2 tokens won, and one 6th place finish for $14. I'd be happy to keep up this pace.

All it takes is a little bit of luck and a good understanding of how to play tourney poker when the blinds get big to do well in this format. But man these tourneys go fast and are super-swingy.

** A note on M: A term taken from the Harrington on Hold'em book series (outstanding books, btw) representing how many more rounds of play you can withstand before blinds and antes eat away all of your chips. The lower the M, the more desperate you are to make a move and get out of push-fold mode.