I have decided to improve my tournament play over the next year. As I have mentioned in the past, historically I have primarily been a NL ring game player. While I have had good success at ring games, I really enjoy the thrill of tournaments. NL ring play and NL tourney play differ substantially. I have found it very difficult to play both during the same timeframe because they require such different skill sets. So to really improve at tourneys, I plan to focus on them exclusively for the next 2-3 months. I will also play SNGs since I don't always have the time to play an entire tournament. I find SNGs require skill sets very similar to tournaments. With that in mind I started August out on the right foot, by placing 16th of 130 in the Online Series of Poker event at Absolute Poker yesterday. This was a $110 buy-in tourney and I won my entry last week at a $11 satellite. So the month has started out pretty well. I went out on a bad beat river suckout when my AK was leading on the flop against an ATo, but a T spiked the river and I was out. However, I want to highlight the one key mistake I made prior to that hand that really ended it for me. First of all, I was very happy with my placement because in reality I did not have the cards during this tourney. I played with a below average stack for most of the tourney and really made very good decisions to stay out of trouble. I had two very good hands late that tripled me up take me up around average when we approached the money cutoff of 18 places paid. I have learned a lot from this mistake hand and I hope you will too. Oftentimes once the tourney reaches the money, players let their guard down and make some poor decisions. I think that is exactly what happened to me here. I had about 8,500 chips and the average stack was about 10,000 and the blinds are $300/$600. We had 18 players remaining. I am in the big blind looking at A5o. I am folding this hand in most other positions and I know I am folding to a raise. Unfortunately nobody raises -- one late position player limps and the small blind limps. I check to see a flop. I think checking here was a decent play. I could have raised and tried to take down the pot, but I also did not want to lose a lot of chips if I get called. With the antes, the total pot is now around $2,200. The flop comes A83 rainbow. I know my hand could be dominated but I also know that if neither player has an A I could take the pot here. So I bet out $1,200, about 60% of the pot. Again I think this is a decent play. I have risked about 25% of my stack at this point and have a reasonable chance of taking the pot. Unfortunately the limper calls and the small blind folds. The turn brings a T and I check. I don't like my hand here at all and really should be finished with this hand. My opponent makes the minimum bet $600. Here is where the mistake came in. I called. In retrospect, my antenna really should have gone up with that minimum bet. Either he is very weak or he is trying to goad me into raising. In either case, calling is the wrong play. I should have either folded or raised, with my preferred play to raise the pot. Yes, it commits a lot of chips but this is a very weak bet. If I am beat he will raise all in and I am finished with the hand and still have a small stack. If he folds I take a nice sized pot. I exacerbated the situation on the river by checking and calling another minimum bet. My A5 lost to a higher kicker A9. In hindsight, I am confident he would have folded to a pot-sized raise fearing two pair. Brutal play on my part and I hope to have learned from it. However, I am proud of my play through the rest of the tourney.

Source: Betting for Value