I remember why I do not play tournaments very often.. As you recall, during BARGE we play a number of tournaments. I entered three, and as luck would have it, I won one of them!

It was the “TOC” tournament, with a format based on the Tournament of Champions Mike Sexton developed and ran for two years. Mike was a major pioneer in this, and his vision of international poker tournaments where only winners of other tournaments were allowed to enter was a terrific one.

Anyway, the format is alternating rounds of limit hold’em, Omaha eight-or-better, and stud high for most of the event, followed by No Limit hold’em for the final two or three tables. It is nice test of all-around skill, and I am proud to have won it (167 participants). However, the event started at 10:00 AM, and ended at 11:00 PM. This totally knocked my out for a couple of days. I went to the next day’s event (No Limit tournament), got knocked out in the first two hours,and went back home to sleep.

I awoke in time for the banquet, and then played a variant of pot limit Omaha (which we call Bing-la-ha after Bingo Reick who invented it), which is a PLO except after the flop betting, the dealer rolls a die to determine whether the rest of the hand will be played high-only or high-low. We play it with $1-$2 blinds and a “mandatory” $5 straddle, and several thousand (at least) on the table. I played three hours, won a bit, then slept all the next day as well.

I was planning to use this Thought to answer a question that came up in the forum regarding whether sponsored players play differently than they would if they played their own money. I had no idea, never being sponsored, but I asked around and found out an answer. I will post it here next week. Tune in.