The Final Table

It's easy entering a poker tournament. All you need to do is show your identity with a photo, pay the entry fee and start playing.

You will be facing people with a wide variety of skills --players who make a living gambling, housewives, retirees, bankers, lawyers, police officers, farmers, fast food employees, construction workers and I could go on and on.

It's easy to get into a poker table. The tough part is making the final table.

When I first started playing poker tournaments more than 30 years ago, they were limit tournaments. You didn't receive as many chips for your buy-in and the tournaments took a lot longer to finish.

But progress came along in the form of no-limit. It was a boon to the casinos. No-limit tournaments with blinds that increased every 15 or 20 minutes assured that the tournament would be over in a relatively short period of time and the players knocked out would revert to cash games, which makes the poker room manager very happy.

If you haven't played many tournaments, you may not be aware of one important point: unlike a cash game where you can take your opponent's stack with a single play -- your pocket aces vs. his pocket kings -- you cannot win a tournament in one play. But you sure can lose it.

To make a final table in a tournament, you need a combination of things to happen. First, you need patience. I have always thought although I can't prove it that fishermen would make good tournament players. They need to be patient to wait for that big one to strike.

Second, you need good judgement. Without good judgement, you will make bad plays and your stack of chips will vanish like smoke in an Arizona sky.

Third -- and this may be more important than some people realize -- you need luck. In Texas Hold'em, you can have an incredible flop where you could make a flush, a straight and even have top pair with a good kicker, but lose the pot to two pairs on the river. It happens. It's called poker.

I recently traveled to Las Vegas to try to break a losing streak that was frankly starting to get a bit tiring. New faces across the table, a return to my old casinos where I had enjoyed past successes I thought would be the key to changing my fortune.

well, Las Vegas did not cure my losing streak. I played three tournaments in two days. Although I came close, I failed to make the final table and returned to my room at the Orleans a loser.

It's a long lonely drive back to Phoenix after booking a losing session in Glitter Gulch, the city that never sleeps. But I made the drive through Hunderson, Wikieup, Kingman and Wickenburg, the old familiar places where I had driven so many times before, and arrived back at my apartment just before sunup.

I tried to analyze what I had done wrong, made a few changes in my play and returned to my favorite Arizona casinos to retry my luck.

I'm happy to report to you that it worked.

Last night I made the final table in a tournament at Wild Horse Pass, one of the friendliest poker rooms I have ever played. I finished seventh and feel like the weight of the world is off my shoulders. You can do the same. Patience, skill and luck. In poker, there are no replacements for any of them.

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 ).