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I thought arriving late to poker tournaments was an inconsequential vanity worthy of Phil Hellmuth. But, having "arrived" late to my last few on PartyPoker.net, I can discern a good reason why someone would do such a thing: to avoid losing a ton of chips early on marginal hands when the blinds (the automatic payments into the pot before cards are seen--meant to create action) are low. And the blinds go higher, this tends to focus players, letting more skilled players come to the fore. (One begins to see that 'experimenting' with marginal hands gets costly if one doesn't win.) I was very excited to see that the maximum field for the biggest tourneys on the site had increased from 4000 to 4270; however, when I finished the 2:00 PM tourney in 563rd, I was worried that I'd missed out on the "cash." Luckily, I did not. I received 854 play chips. There had been zero in my account. I've been setting a goal to only play with chips I've earned, but lately, I've had to go back on that, because I've gotten too cocky at one No-Limit table. I'd make a small (fake) fortune, at which point I should have walked away from the table and deposited the sum. (I reached 3/4 of a million chips at one point, enough to play terribly for life and still never borrow new chips.) But pride goeth before the fall. Still, this decent finish will be the start of my new non-borrowed chip-stack. In my next post, I'll try to tell the tale of that tournament. Luck sometimes beats skill; that certainly happened here.

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