My Performance At The Bay 101 Shooting Star
Two poker buddies and I played the Shooting Star $2000 buy-in no-limit hold ‘em tournament at Bay 101 last Sunday. I don’t play many tournaments, and, in the three years I’ve played poker, this was only the third tournament with a buy-in of $1500 or more I’ve entered.
Two key differences exist between these sorts of tournaments and the ~$200-300 buy-in regular, local tournaments at Bay 101 and Lucky Chances. First, low buy-in tournaments generally feature a rapidly-increasing blind bet structure (blinds might increase every 10 or 15 minutes); in higher buy-in tournaments, blinds might increase anywhere from every 30 minutes to every two hours. (For this event, the blinds increased every 40 minutes). Second, in general, the quality of players tends to be higher in higher buy-in tournaments.
Despite my relative lack of tournament experience, I am quite comfortable playing in events like this and was very much at ease (except for the expected tension of competition) for the seven hours I was in play. I was focused and played as intelligently as possible. I made a few small mistakes here and there, but I made even more good, aggressive plays to win pots. Overall, I was entirely pleased with my play, finishing around 60th out of 250, around 10-15 spots out of the money. Even my last hand, pushing all-in with AKo and getting beaten by 88, was the right play given the point in the tournament, my chip stack size, the position of the aggressor opponent, etc.
One silver lining: In the break immediately before the round in which I was knocked out, I made a $100 “last-longer” bet with a buddy. A few minutes into play after the break, he tapped me on the shoulder to let me know he’d just been knocked out of the tournament. Right at that moment, the cutoff raised, I looked down to see AKo and pushed. When my opponent’s 88 held up, I had lasted longer than him for about 1 minute — good enough for $100. 
