Avoiding the carnage

You can't win a tournament with a policy of avoidance. Funnily enough, though, you can come in second :-) That's what happened to me in the second tournament I joined last night. I just kept avoiding the carnage, and other players kept obligingly hitting the felt. It was a no limit hold'em tournament; I'd missed the money in the 8-game I joined to start the session. 8-games are good training for no limit hold'em, since the starting stack at 8-games is 3 times the starting stack at no limit hold'em tournaments. The reason is that when you start a no limit in those circumstances, you feel like you're severely short-stacked right off the bat. There's nothing like feeling severely short-stacked to sharpen your poker senses :-)

buy_in entry_fee num_players num_hands place winnings

 45000      5000           6        57     5        0
 45000      5000           6        27     2    94500

delta: $-5,500
tournament balance: $2,332,590
balance: $9,215,289