How You Are Eliminated: What Does It Say?

[Dan Mezick]

I think it says alot about the maturity of your tournament game.

Others might assert it says absolutely nothing.

But I think the hand you go broke with in a tournament tells more about the depth and breadth of your overall tournament game than just about any other hand in that event.

I heard Phil Ivey once in a WPT post-elimination interview say that he keeps careful records of every hand he goes broke with in tournament play. If that is true, Phil assigns a lot of meaning to these specific hands.

[IHateKeithSmart]

This is an interesting viewpoint, but I am usually more concerned with how I got to the point of elimination. A post from John Hurst helped me out with some of this though process:

Here (http://archiveserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Board=&Number=2021641&page=0&vi ew=&sb=5&o=14&fpart=) it is.

[illegit]

The emphasis most people put on their elimination hands as compared to other hands is already so exaggerated that I have to say it's much less important than most think. No one needs to convince someone else to carefully examine their bustout hands; EVERYONE does that automatically because they want to see if there was any immediate action they could have taken to avoid elimination.

What isn't so obvious are small mistakes you made that didn't eliminate you but may have costed you a bet here or a bet there and they're often where you're really making big mistakes. While often you played your bustout hand perfect but will still 2nd guess yourself on it.

The elimination hand needs to be downgraded in the mind, not upgraded.

[yvesaint]

What does it mean if I'm only eliminated because of bad beats

[Degen]

i think any one given hand, in a vacuum, is rather meaningless


however i think there is great value in keeping these records (and i think i am going to start now...) because trends can probably tell us a great deal

i usually go broke on failed blind stealing attempts or when i get sucked out on-i'd guess many fish go broke when they cannot release beat hands

It means your middle names should be "Hellmuth-Filmaff".

[el_dusto]

today?

mostly outdrawn. two 2-outers, a few 3-outers.
top pair overplayed into a flopped set, 2 or 3 times.
TP2K into TPTK once.
idiot end of a 4-card board straight once.
two failed steal attempts.

man... i'm a donk.

[mts]

i sort of agree it does matter.... if you're a bad player you will recognize a pattern. Otherwise, i'm not sure.

i think it is more important to focus on the hands that caused you to go broke, not necessarily eliminated.

[bobbycharles]

I cuss the bad beats as much as the next guy. It truly seems I only get knocked out when I get my chips in the middle with the lead and get sucked out on. But after reading this and a few other posts, I now realize, I need to ask the questions: Why am I often in the situation that I'm putting all of my chips in the middle - is it really necessary or am I too aggressive? Is my table image such that I'm getting more calls than I should? Am I not accumulating enough chips earlier in the tourney? etc etc.

Overall, I think more reflection is needed for ALL stages of the game, but the last hand is always the one you remember.

[DWarrior]

I think for me it's mostly lost bets on previous rounds. For example, going broke on QQ vs AKo. Some may blow this off as just a coinflip and hope for a better day, but I look at the mistakes I made previously. Say I have 2k and average is 3k, now I'm flipping a coin to get 4k or bust, but if I lost 200 in chips to lost opportunities, that flip should have been between 4.4k or bust instead, so every mistake I make in early rounds I usually view as at least double that loss because I'll usually have to survive a flip or worse at some point in the tournament. It used to be that a flip for me would mean the difference between getting to the average or going broke, but the recent bustouts I've had were flips that were the difference between becoming one of the chip leaders or going broke, so it's obvious that I'm on the right track.

Also, lost bets may be the reason why you go broke at times. Say you lost 500 to stupid plays and lost bets early on, and you survive a coin flip and a favorable all-in and now you're at 8k, when you should have been at 10k. Then you go broke with KK vs AA to a guy who has 9k in chips. Well, those extra 500 chips would have left you with 1k now, not a lot, but still a fighting chance.

The hands I get eliminated or crippled on will generally be either a lost flip, KK vs AA-type hands, or a failed bluff/semibluff. The real problem for me are the lost bets and misplays on previous hands that lead me to the final hand so what I do now is try and remember a hand in a tournament that I misplayed that would have lead me to be in a more favorable spot in a tournament. I want to make it so that when I have to really gamble, winning will put me in a signifficantly more favorable position and not just bail me out until the next big hand.

Maybe for someone like Phil Ivey, who makes a lot less mistakes, the final hand matters more, but I definitely make a ton of mistakes in other hands to make the last hand no different than the others.