Steps

So my buddy R turned me on to the PartyPoker steps tournaments last night. I had heard them talked about but certainly didn't know what they were, until my buddy told me about them excitedly yesterday after he had won the Step 5 ministep tournament for a $2000 prize, which he bought in to for only $20. It's actually a really smart way for party to get people to play without having to pay out too much in winnings, and it's also a great way for the players to have a shot at a nice sized prize for a potentially very small initial buyin. For the ministeps, Step 1 is a $6 buyin, with the winner getting a buyin into a Step 2 ministep tourney, which is itself a $20 buyin. Since all of these step tournaments are just one table, this is a structure that I have been playing online for some time, so I figured I liked my odds. In fact, since you have to win the ministep 1 to get a seat at the $20 step 2 tournament, and since I have played plenty of $20 buyin tourneys anyways, R convinced me to just start with the ministep 2, in which you only need to finish in the top 2 to win a set to the ministep 3 tourney. Well, long story short, despite literally seeing 11% of flops -- for me basically around half (or even less) of my usual percentage -- because my cards were SO ungodly horrible, I *still* somehow managed to end in 2nd place. It's weird because party makes absolutely no distinction between the prize for 1st and 2nd place in the ministep 2 tournament -- both just get a free seat to a ministep 3 tournament, and that's all. So once we got heads up, you're just Playing for Pride. And my pride got wounded when I called allin with 10-J suited, only to see him flip QJ suited, and (of course) my dominated hand failed to catch anything to pick me up. But it looks like I'll be in a ministep 3 tournament now sometime later this week, so look for me.

Btw, I also entered a $20 buyin, 174 entrant tournament on full tilt, and made it down to 54 players left before moving in with QQ on a short stack. Almost always a bad idea.