A CONUNDRUM

                            

             For a while I was doing pretty well in tournament play.  Strange, since until a few months ago I eschewed tournaments completely.  If my son hadn’t urged me to give them a try, I doubt if I would have played in anything other than cash games.

 

            “Tournaments should be right up your alley,” he said.  “What more do you want than limited monetary risks coupled with interesting cash rewards?”

 

            “Yeah,” I said, “at odds of forty, sixty or a hundred to one.”

 

            “There are prizes for coming in second, third and so on.”

 

            Since he was in town we tried a couple of tourneys.  Besides being fun, I found the competition stimulating.  After two outright victories and once being in the money, I began catching onto the idea that this style of play might be more rewarding than the more traditional manner.  True, tournaments are long and often laborious, but isn’t that a small price to pay for picking up all those dollars?

 

            If difficult for a man to acknowledge his ordinariness in life, it is close to impossible for a poker professional to admit his skills are not much better than anyone else’s.  Add to this a string of favorable results, and – voila! – you might get to thinking like that fellow who says: take away the element of luck and he alone would win every game.  Really, I know what the man means!   Because when I hit a flush or a straight I tend to think I am pretty damn shrewd. But let an opponent pull winning cards on me, and by God, have you ever seen such unadulterated luck?   

 

            Recently tens have been giving me lots of trouble.   In one hand I held a pair of jacks against a young fellow’s wired tens.  Sure enough, a ten appeared on the flop.  That same evening a woman went all-in with a suited ten-seven.  Naturally I called with big slick.  My ace and king came up, but so did a queen and a jack.  Then there was the hand where I got knocked out of a tournament when my ace high flush came in second to a Chinese gentleman’s tens over queens full.  On another occasion, I had a winning hand turn into a loser when the ten of spades gave my opponent a flush on the river.  Lastly, I lost a huge hand, and my tournament seat, when my wired tens lost to a pretty girl’s ace-queen.  Both her cards turned over while mine remained unaccompanied.

 

            You know what?  I’m beginning to discover that making money in tournaments is just as difficult as winning cash games.   Those two victories and that fourth place finish must have been freaks.  Perhaps I’ve been wearing the wrong colored shirts, or perhaps I should buy a rabbit’s foot.  How could Dame Fortune desert me so quickly?  So here I am, back at square one doubting whether this is a game of luck or one of skill, and wondering where I should play next time out.