Imaginary Money, Tilt and Bubbling the Invitational

MBB's post on "The EV Graph-Line, Losers, Whiners and Winners" had me questioning my logic for a moment and generated a wee bit of discussion. Thinking it through, I realise that having Sklansky Bucks to help manage tilt is a big help to me and every edge is just that, an edge. This article on Imaginary Money explains it much more simply that I ever could.

Playing with someone drunk at the table in a Tournament can tilt me. If it was a cashie, I wouldn't care but in a tourney it introduces too much luck for my liking. I can tangle early and get knocked out or sit back and sure enough someone else will get chipped up. Tilt is playing below my A game and there were hands that I knew mathematically that I should play and didn't. Anyway, the issue is with me, not the drunk.

In the Invitational, I managed to Bubble with a 5th and a 5th. I would have thought that 5th twice would get in the top 4, but 3 of last week's 4 placed in the top 4 again and one of the very strong casino regulars played extremely well to move up into 2nd. I sweated 8 or 9 races that would have seen me through when I was on the rail and lost them all. Que sera, sera.

I will allow myself one whinge though to get it off my chest. AJo I raise from CO and druunk in BB calls. Heads up, and a flop of K82r, I bet half pot as bet size had no relevance, it was binary, he'd play or not. Blank Turn so I check, check. River blank, so I check. He thinks and looks like folding. A few people down the other end of the table say don't fold, then someone speaks up and says, guys if you aren't in the hand. I sit tight and eventually he lifts his cards to fold, is 3/4 the way in the muck when a hand reaches out stops the cards in hand, pushes them muck and says, just check. He paired his 7 on the river and won the pot.

It's possibly the first time that I've ever been less than gracious at the table and hopefully the last. I think I can be excused though. For the record, the drunk did absolutely nothing wrong in this hand. In retrospect, it absolutely made the difference between an APPT seat or not as I could have easily folded into 4th and would have. Unfortunately, I realised this at the time and tilted by clamming up just a little too soon for fear of tilt. Que sera, sera.