Level 3

“You know I’m one of the best players here.” That’s what Brian ‘I see 80% of the flops’ McKenzie said to me after he took 4rd this past Saturday.

“Yeah Brian, you are up there for sure, too bad people don’t respect your raises.”

Good thing he doesn’t know that I typically set the over/under for him busting out at level 3 blinds, level 2 if he’s on his fourth tequila when the tourney starts.

This past Saturday he just kept getting unbelievably lucky and catching cards. Every. Fucking. Time. And yes, I started at his table and this time I did not make the level 3 blinds. Oh well, cant win ‘em all. At least he respects his play, me, I just like his chips.

On Sunday I made a huge mistake, one that never leads to a good night. I played a number of hands during level 1 and 2. For reasons that are not yet clear to me, for some reason during the first two levels of this tourney, a raise of 3-5 times the BB typically means that there will be 4-6 people seeing the flop with you at an 8 handed table. With 10/20 blinds a raise to 200 is pretty meaningless, and will not chase anyone out of the pot. It is not uncommon to see pots of over 2k during 10/20 blinds, and that’s with everyone starting with just 1,500 in chips.

And then something magical and mysterious happens, the blinds hit level 3 at 50/100 and suddenly people start folding their marginal/garbage hands to raises of 3-5 times the BB. I’m not sure what it is that causes this sudden shift, maybe it’s the fact that after the chip up’s, people see fewer chips at the table and are not able to let them go quite so easily. This seems to hold until the blinds hit 1,000/2,000 at which time it’s like we’ve warped back to level 1. I guess this is not quite as bad in reality as the M’s are getting a bit low for many still in, but it seems like too many are willing to go broke with garbage (ie, 48o) when they can still play a good 7 or 8 more orbits.