From a few months ago, before we had this message forum...

Earlier this week I 'discovered' the Full Tilt Daily Double tournaments. These average ~ 1,000 entrants, cost $12 to enter, pay the top 15% or so and have ten minute blind levels. Best online structure I've seen yet, and I really like it!

This tournament started at 9:00 p.m. with 1,129 entrants. Starting stacks were 2,000 chips and blinds began at 10/20, giving everyone 100 big blinds. 180 spots were paid, so my strategy for the first three hours was to play very tight and solid. I wasn't going to limp with garbage - even in position. I wasn't going to do any big bluffs. I was going to wait for big hands and then try to keep the pots small. The blinds quadruple every hour, so I figured I'd be in good shape to roughly double my stack each hour. I ended up playing just enough hands to stick with my game plan almost exactly for the first three hours:

Tournament start: 1,129 players, 2,000 chips, 100 big blinds

First break: 203rd place out of 620 remaining players, 4170 chips, 42 big blinds

Second break: 102nd place out of 263 remaining players, 8,780 chips, 22 big blinds

Third break: 59th place out of 85 remaining players, 17,160 chips. 11 big blinds

OK, that worked well so far, and it was now time to start turning up the aggression. By now I'm sure many of the players had good notes on me and had noticed that I was only playing premium hands. So my goal for the next hour would be to pick my spots as well as possible and increase my chip count at least eight times, trying to get to ~ 20 big blinds by the next break.

Success! I did get pretty lucky in one hand when my straight flush draw hit and I took out two opponents at once. But I did have a 60% chance of hitting anyways. Overall, I did nearly twice as well this hour as I had planned. The three hours spent establishing my table image paid off in a big way!

Fourth break: 1st place out of 22 players, 245,693 chips, 41 big blinds.

We were now down to only two and a half tables, and I had a nice lead. I was in first place out of 23 remaining players with 258,000 chips. Average stack was only 98,000! It would take an idiot to blow a lead like this.

Down to two tables now and I was still doing well. By now TX9 had morphed into the most aggressive player I had ever seen, so I decided not to play any pots with him. My goal would be to try and get heads up with him:

Now down to the final table and I'd taken some hits. TX9 played his big stack to perfection and I stuck to my guns trying to stay out of his way while he took everyone else out. I even folded pocket kings once pre-flop after three people went all-in. Clearly I was intimidated (and tired too). I think this was my biggest mistake of the tournament. That pot would have catapulted me up to first place, with double the chips of second place By this time though, the remaining players were quite a bit better than I'm using to playing online, and I wasn't making the best possible decisions. With nine players left and an average stack of 251,000 chips, I was in 4th place with 216,000.

My weakness was starting to become obvious to the other players. They weren't folding to my raises any more and they were now reraising me more than ever before. Nothing a little (OK, so it was a lot of) aggression can't fix though. By the time we were down to eight players I was very healthy again - in second place - with 370,000 chips.

This hand really hurt. With seven players remaining, I got dealt pocket jacks on the button. This was the perfect situation for me to appear to be stealing. Pre-flop, it was folded around to muleplow who put in a raise. I reraised the minimum, hoping he had A-x or a small pair and would reraise all-in. He did, but the community cards hammered me when my opponent hit Broadway by the river. I believe I played this well, but losing a 366,684 chip pot was painful.

After the above hand, I really poured on the aggression - more than ever before. Within just a few hands I was back in second place again, this time with most chips I've ever had - 418,702. But it was to be short-lived. On this hand, I raised to 78,000 pre-flop with K-9 offsuit and speedyb73 put me all-in. I had pot odds to call, even though I assumed he had an ace, he had A-6 suited and I lost a big pot.

After the above hand I was starting to feel pretty desperate again. I lost a couple 'small' pots and found myself down to 185,000 chips, which was only six big blinds. I ended up going all in with a marginal hand and getting crushed. It was a poor move, but I still finished sixth out of 1,129 players, for almost $400.

I finished at 2:46 a.m. and the entire tournament ended at 2:56 a.m. I was only ten minutes away from the end of the tournament. Here are some of the lessons I learned:

1. Be patient. With a blind structure like the one above, there's just no reason to take unnecessary chances. I've read before that there's no way to win a tournament early, but it can definitely be lost early. This really hit home with me last night as I watched hundreds of players go all-in unnecessarily and lose all their chips early on.

2. Establish a rock solid table image. It's true that I did get very lucky one time, but much of my incredible fourth hour chip accumulation was made possible by the table image I had created in the first three hours. People just believed me because I had only played 16% of the first 300 hands, and when I showed down, I almost always won.

3. In the money, the game of 'poker' changes. I can't tell you how many chips I lost by calling pre-flop with a small pocket pair, suited ace or suited connectors. I kept wanting to see flops with these hands, but no one would allow it. Once the money bubble broke, it seemed like there was almost never an unraised pot pre-flop, and most of them involved at least one all-in move. So many players acted like they just wanted to make the money. Once they made it, they were all-in with any decent cards. So the lesson here was to not waste chips calling pre-flop, unless I was prepared to call an all-in re-raise. Once I figured this out, I started doing much better.

4. Reraise the raiser at the final tables. After a while patterns started to emerge. I could almost tell who was going to put in the first pre-flop raise, regardless of their cards. It was based on chip stack and position much more than cards. Whenever I could accurately predict who it was going to be, I would automatically re-raise that person all-in. I believe this worked at least four times in a row for me, over about a 90-minute period. I tried hard not to overuse this though.

5. Be patient. At the end I didn't need to go all-in when I did. I had enough chips to last five or six more minutes, and the entire tournament was over in ten. Hindsight is always 20/20, but had I just shut my computer off with six big blinds remaining, I probably would have placed two or three spots higher and earned an additional $500 or so. Who knows, I might have hit a hand and doubled up!