The Final Table

'See you at the final table.'

This is the way many tournament poker players salute their poker-playing pals shortly before a tournament begins.

I have uttered the phrase myself many times, and have had the phrase said to me. And sometimes when Lady Luck is on my side, I have made that final table and shared the cash distributed by the poker room.

But for every final table I made, there have been dozens that I fell short of the mark. The truth is, it's hard to make that final table. For some people, unfortunately, it's next to impossible.

Poker is a game that often requires an extreme amount of patience. A deck of 52 cards can seemingly turn against you during the relatively short period of time when you are competing in a tournament. When that happens, no amount of skill is going to help you. It's all determined by how the cards fall.

When I first began playing poker tournaments in the 1970s, I had energy to burn and guts of steel. Add to that a stubborn nature that refused to admit defeat and you can see why I was a package difficult to contain.

We played two poker games in those days -- five card draw and five card lowball using the joker. Texas Hold'em would come a decade later.

Very few tournaments had a single buy-in. Most tournaments featured re-buys for the first hour and an add-on when you ran out of chips.

Casinos like the Gold Coast, Binion's and the Sands featured tournaments where for a small amount of cash -- usually $15 to $25 -- you would receive $100 in tournament chips. They wouldn't last very long and you soon found yourself digging for more cash to stay in contention.

I recall one tournament when I made nearly a dozen rebuys before I finally started catching cards. It cost me over $100 but I won the tourney and collected over $1,200.

These days my tournament strategy boils down to survival. I realize nobody wins a tournament in the first hour or two, but you can sure lose it during that period of time.

Some players go all-out from the moment the first hand is dealt. They ram and jam, go all-in, and wind up a railbird wondering where all their chips went.

Think of a poker tournament as a deep sea fishing event. You are trying to trap the big fish by being deceptive. When they nibble at the hook, you don't set the reel and try to sink it. You play along with them, and THEN you set the hook when you are convinced you have the nut hand.

I recommend poker tournaments to any serious poker player. The returns on your investment are very enticing and are well worth the extra mental power you need to use in order to make that final table. Like I said earlier, it isn't easy to make it. But when you do, you will share a thrill that will stay with you for a long time.

Author: Geno Lawrenzi Jr.

(Geno Lawrenzi Jr. is an international journalist, magazine author and ghostwriter and poker player who lives in Phoenx, AZ. He has published 2,000 articles in 50 magazines and 125 newspapers. If you want to share a gambling story or book idea with him, send an email to glawrenzi@gmail.com ).