A tournament within the tournament

As is turns out, I was wrong about my longest bubble, since I was calculating it wrong. I was looking for the tournament where I played the most hands while still coming in third, but what I should have been looking for was the tournament where I played the most three-handed hands. That truly measures the bubble, since the counting doesn't start until the bubble does, and ends when the bubble ends. Using this methodology, Friday night's tournament actually had my third longest bubble - 84 hands. My longest is a whopping 90 hands, which occurred in the last tournament I played on February 13th.

Playing three-handed is a tournament within the tournament. You can't play the same way you played to get there, and you can't continue to play the way you're playing if you manage to make it to heads up. I think playing three-handed well is actually even harder than playing heads up well. It's arguably an even more important skill, since if you don't master it, you'll never make the money enough times to turn a profit playing tournaments.

On Saturday night, I had a decent-sized bubble - 32 hands. Unfortunately, I came out on the short end.

buy_in entry_fee num_players num_hands place winnings

 45000      5000           6       108     3        0

delta: $-50,000
tournament balance: $2,127,090
balance: $9,009,789