You were never shovelier

Given my druthers, I would never shove pre-flop in a tournament. As a reminder, shoving is poker slang for going all in. The reason I'd avoid it if I could is that it's just plain risky. Of course, not shoving pre-flop is a luxury that is often denied you; more often than not, you will have to shove pre-flop at one or more crucial points in the tournament in order to stay alive. This will generally be when you're short stacked; if you don't want to get eaten up by the blinds, which are always growing, you need to grow your stack back pronto when it falls below a certain number of big blinds.

This means that you need to be able to recognize "shovely" hands: hands which are lovely enough to shove with. If you wait too long, even though it doesn't qualify as shoving per se, you'll end up having to call for all your chips with inferior hands. There's a real art in sensing how long to wait; there's a healthy dose of luck involved, too.

Last night, my losing streak continued, as I lost two more tournaments. The most memorable, and painful, hand of the night came in the first tournament, when I'd been dealt a big slick. A short stack shoved, and I called. The shorty turned over rockets, and I was a huge underdog. I lost $525 on that hand.

I just realized I've never explained a really important point about sit and gos. The amount of chips every player starts with has no relation to the buy in. Everyone starts with $1,000 in chips. Losing $525 is a huge loss, effectively representing a loss of over $40,000 when the tournament has an $80,000 buy in.

buy_in entry_fee num_players num_hands place winnings

 80000      1000           6        46     5        0
 80000      1000           6        45     4        0

delta: $-162,000
tournament balance: $1,405,090
balance: $6,535,821