Mid-States Poker Tour

The Mid-States Poker Tour held a main event in Milwaukee almost three weeks ago. I didn’t see any coverage of the event on the local news casts, but you can watch the full final table video here.

I entered a $65 satellite to try to win my way into the tournament’s main event. It was only a few days before the main event was to begin, so everything was staked on a continuous series of wins, finishing in the top 20% in two tournaments, that would result in my playing all night, and on the final day all day, in the main event. I would be playing more nights than not, over the following five days.

So there I was at a table of very serious players, though a few turned extremely insecure after a big loss. I didn’t start out too well. I recovered some but then became extremely tired. My lack of play over the last year or two showed. I was not on my game, relearning lessons previously learned as I made mistakes. I was calling bets too large for my stack in relation to my hand strength.

Realizing I was rusty and had never played for more than one evening or afternoon in the course of a week, or even a month, the daunting task of several days of serious play during a time of week when our business is most active sent a wave of weariness over me. I was already tired. I often do not sleep much, though I average nearly six and a half hours of sleep a night (recorded to the minute by my CPAP machine and documented by my sleep apnea specialist).

On top of that my mental focus just wasn’t there. I have never had much luck or results at the casino. I find the spirit distracting and heavy. My concentration and motivations become mottled. If I had any type of success at the casino in the past, when I was playing much more, I may well have never let my play lapse and may have pursued the game much more veraciously.

Missing Church wasn’t something that inspired me either. The final day of the main event began early Sunday. Looking over the rules of previous tournaments, one’s stack would be reduced through the rotational blinds until one showed up. That is, you could arrive late. I had even tried to calculate how many hands could be played in an hour, the level of blinds and how much one would lose over the first hour and a half. I tried to time how long the auto shuffle took in case the table would fold all around, trying to blind out an unsupported stack. Looking over the rules of this last tournament I had the impression you had to be there at the start time, though no consequences were listed for not being there.

It appeared to me that the auto shuffle continues until the dealer presses the button to retrieve a fresh deck.

As far as the media coverage there must be a story there. Poker programming had been advertised in the past on national broadcast television, but then was never broadcast locally. Was that simply the early manifestation of poker losing its spectator base? How many markets replaced the poker programming with insignificant local programming? That was a couple years back.

This is my conclusion from my latest adventures in pursuit of poker glory; I must start the satellite tournaments much earlier in the big tournament path. I need to win a spot at the main event more than a week before it begins. I will not even try for a final week rush through the several steps to the main event again. Of course I could always buy my way in, though it is not cheap. That is why they have satellites; to allow people a more economical way to get into a big tournament based on ability rather than money.