I'm going to have to side with Drizz here and say that I may not be cut out for tournaments. For one, they're a huge time committment, time that I don't always have, and second, the long term seems to be a big pile of bullshit.

Yes, I realize that my thought process is a little flawed here, but hear me out.

In a cash game, if you continue to make a play with a certain hand that has a positive expectation and the price is right for you to continue drawing, even if you are behind against an opponent(you don't know that at the time) over the long run you will come out ahead. With a large enough sample size--that apparently has no real-world value, and nobody can tell you what an adequate sample size really is. That blows my mind--you will come out ahead. The odds work out in your favor. Sure, you may get sucked out on by some wanktard and lose a whole stack, but you can always reload. You always get another crack at getting your money back.

In a tournement, though, your money is thrown into the mix up front. And if you find yourself in the same situation as above, pot odds mean realiatively little, especially when your tournament life is on the line. There is no long run.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that you can get lucky in tournaments and survive--if only for the duration of that tournament--and possibly even have a big score. You can't, however, do the same in the cash game and expect to be around a year from now, because you will go broke. I don't know how well I can stomach the luck factor. Or rather, I don't know how long I can stomach it and still keep anything resembling a bankroll intact.

I've proven--at least a little bit--that I have something to compete in these competitions, but I just don't have the consistency in results to keep going. I've made a handful of final tables, not really cashing for a huge amount, but enough to not thumb my nose at. Though they are the fuel feeding the poker furnace, and the reason that so many people have started playing the game, it blows my mind that so many people can continue playing them with poorer results than I.

I like tournaments, and the thrill from weeding through thousands of people is unlike winning a pot in the cash game. There is no sense of immediacy in the cash game to get ahead. If you're stuck and play smartly, you can turn things around. A good player can always get ahead. Not always true in a tournament. There is a gotta double up, gotta steal, gotta get ahead mentality that provides a different kind of rush.

But, just look at how many posts there are per day about some underskilled, over-retarded player sucking out on someone that is much better player. Felicia is a ten times the player I am, and if she's losing money at them, I shouldn't be playing tournaments like I have. I just may not be cut out for tournament play.

The thing that kills me is that now that I realize that tournaments are the pox on my poker wang, there has to be an equivalent of a WPBT online tourney every damn-diggidy-doggone day of the week. And I can't say no to you people. If entering a normal tournament--one that has 75% bad players entered--is -ev for me, then entering those that contain smaller fields, with many more good players, definitely can't be good for me.

Less dead money entered means that sooner, rather than later, I'll be the dead money. Guaranteed.