I love tournaments

Days like these remind me why I fight through the frustration to keep playing tournaments.

I won a $130 one-rebuy tournament Sunday, beating 23 other players to pocket a profit of $820 after deducting my two rebuys, my 20-percent swap with a friend (the same one who outdrew me twice in the 2-5 game last week) and tip.

Basically, I sucked out twice to chip up, once with AJ vs. QQ, then with TT vs. KK. I did have both players covered, but each one would have chopped out more than half of my stack at the time.

The final table went smoothly, as I busted a couple players and picked up a lot of pots with preflop raises, especially on the bubble (five spots paid). Most importantly, I won three preflop races, busting the 11th-place finisher with 66 vs. QJ, fourth place with A9 vs. 66 and winning the event with 22 vs. AQ. The final board came J986K. Talk about all around it.

I really enjoy playing tournaments, even these fast-paced crapshoots. (Though this Sunday tournament does not have a bad structure at all for a daily tournament. 4,000 chips, first three blinds 30 minutes, blinds 20 minutes after that.) It's fun to start with 1/25th of the chips and end up with all of them.

However, the variance in these tournaments is tough to take. The difference between first and second place today was about $500, and it was decided by a hand where I moved in preflop with a barely better than 50 percent chance to win. If I had lost with A9 vs. 66, I would have had a much tougher time four-handed and very well could have finished second or even third.

I have just started "The Poker Tournament Formula" by Arnold Snyder. He's known as a blackjack expert, but feedback about Snyder's book on my favorite poker forum, twoplustwo.com, has been favorable. He is one of the few authors to really address the daily, fast-paced tournaments that most low-level players enter. Most of the poker books have focused on larger, big buy-in events that give players much more play. The fast tournaments quickly become all about making moves at pots, often moving all-in on any pot that can be won.

Tournament strategy is really more important than poker strategy in these events.

Cash games are the bread and butter of the professional grinder, but it is so easy for boredom to set in. As long as tournaments don't sap your energy for cash games (as they have done for me in the past), I think they're a worthwhile diversion.