I pride myself in being a better tourney player than a cash game player. Don't get me wrong, I have more than enough patience to play a cash game, but it just seems a tournament is worth it because of the excitement of being all-in. I play tournaments to win, so when I think I have an edge, even if it's miniscule, I play accordingly. I was in the 50+5 Bustout Bonanza tournament on Full Tilt, where top 36 pay and the winner gets around 4500 big ones. 361 platers, including pros such as Stephen Brecher, who was teh first one to bust out at my table, a pro named Quiet Lion, and Howard Lederer. None of them got past the top 200. I had been playing with this table a long time, so I knew who to mess with and how to stay away from with certain hands.

I was the chip leader with around 60000 in chips and 22 people left, when suddenly the server shut down, scaring the hell out of me, because I had worked so hard to build my stack slowly and surely. This had worked out perfectly because nobody noticed my chip stack until it was huge. When it cut out, it turned out i only missed the break, returning on the first hadn back. After 2 hands, i was now second in chips behind the guy to my immediate right. I did not want to mess with him because he had just moved to our table and I didn't have any reads on him. The first hand he came into (Hand #3 for me) he reraised a short stack who had just gone all-in for 3000 (Blinds 800/1600 w/ 200 ante) to 11000, approximately a fifth of my stack. I had QQ, and for some reason, I was scared of AA and KK, so I did the worst possible move, I called.

When goin against a new player who had just been very aggressive, the number of hands he could reraise with that I beat far outweighed the 8 6 possible ways of him beating me, so I should have pushed and isolated myself with the short stack. Calling did me no help because of the fact that I had no idea where I stood. Flop comes out beautifully, all under cards. He bet 10000, I called again, fearing that I was beat. I should haev either folded or pushed. The turn came an Ace and I was done with the hand. If that card didn't help him, he had KK and I was done anyway. So he bet again and I folded.

He flipped over A10s. I lost half of my stack because I was so worried about busting out. I then lost 2 races with short stacks, putting me down to 12000 (blinds were 1000/2000/125) and i pushed with 55. I was knocked out in 15th, about 4 hands after my huge mistake.

15th place is nothing to be ashamed of, but my timidity in one hand cost me this tournament. It's amazing how one hand in NL can destroy one's chances of winning. I made a good laydown too late when I let him catch up to me.

Oh well, there's always next time.