Ok I just finished in the money but........

[slavic]

This sucks. I just played a Party $50 buy in multi-table no limit tourney versus ~580 players and finished in the top 20. Yea that's a better finish than a sit and go but I'm flat out depressed. A top 20 finish paid OK, I can't complain but ack what a feeling.

Is this normal? In a ring game a bad beat wouldn't phase me at all, lose a rack no problem, but for some reason comming up a little short bothers the heck out of me here. It's a shame too because I like to play the Tournies for fun. Anyone have thoughts on a better way to approach this or am I letting my competitive nature get too involved?

[Copernicus]

I washed out of the same one early on a bad beat (boat v boat, he hits his 2 outer on the river)...you couldve done better with my chips that you received after passing through 15 other stacks!

Actually bad beats bother me much more in ring games, probably because of my mind set going in. In ring games my style is to play tight/super tight, and when I have a hand try to isolate and to punish drawing hands. Thus I don't play many hands, and when some fish hits a 2 outer and embarassingly apologizes because he "thought I was bluffing", I just can't take it! The variance in ring games is huge, and I'm a low variance kind of guy, which is why I prefer SnGs. The attitude that even when I lose I "made a profit" because I had the best of it just doesn't hold with me. If its not in my stack, its gone, period.

In multi's I find play to be a little tighter than ring games overall, and even when there is a bad beat there is usually some reasonable excuse for the guy to be in there...he was short-stacked, he has a huge stack so he can stick around till the river and almost has drawing odds and so on. I also know that getting to the final table is going to be like crossing a mine field. I'm going to have to get lucky and not have a dreaded KK v big stacked AA showdown, my Big Slicks are going to have to hold up, and so on. Thus I'm ready when a mine explodes on me, even if the opponent really should never have been in the hand. We both needed luck, he just needed a little more to get past me.

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

The feeling is normal. Probably because the finish is so final. You're out. You're done. Go home, etc.

Relax, take a few deep breaths and try to review some key hands, including your last one. If you did your best, feel better. If you find some mistakes, correct them the next time you play.