I know....you all know this. So do I. Today though I gave prime example of POOR discipline.

I was in 3.30+rebuy tourney, I had survived the rebuy period pretty well. I was stacked at slighlty above the average stack size with a field of 1100ish out of 1400 starting. My mantra to this point had been to stay tight, be aggressive, but don't do anything stupid. I had survived this long playing VERY tight, I had only 2 big pots, but several small ones that were keeping my stack size moving in the right direction.

Here is where it went south. I got Ad6d on the button. Now normally I will not play this in a tourney until the blinds are big enough to start stealing, or if I have a big enough chip lead to start pushing the short stacks around. This was not the case. I looked at the cards and thought "I shouldn't play that...but if I don't hit a set, or a flush I will get out cheap." Yeah right! Here is the hand.

PokerStars Game #2781932964: Tournament #13546956, Hold'em No Limit - Level V (75/150) - 2005/10/11 - 21:34:13 (ET) Table '13546956 148' Seat #6 is the button Seat 1: Damirka (6745 in chips)
Seat 2: jorge5555 (23302 in chips)
Seat 3: TheAtrox (11755 in chips)
Seat 4: coysin (5875 in chips)
Seat 5: burghguy (10691 in chips)
Seat 6: RoyalAsn (7350 in chips)
Seat 7: nothin2gein (11680 in chips)
Seat 8: Xstreme (18648 in chips)
Seat 9: angelbab (12345 in chips)
nothin2gein: posts small blind 75
Xstreme: posts big blind 150
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to TheAtrox [6d Ad]
angelbab: folds
Damirka: folds
jorge5555: folds
TheAtrox: calls 150
coysin: folds
burghguy: folds
RoyalAsn: folds
nothin2gein: folds
Xstreme: checks
*** FLOP *** [8h 6s 4c]
Xstreme: checks
TheAtrox: checks
*** TURN *** [8h 6s 4c] [5c]
Xstreme: bets 150
TheAtrox: raises 150 to 300
Xstreme: calls 150
*** RIVER *** [8h 6s 4c 5c] [Ah]
Xstreme: bets 450
TheAtrox: raises 10855 to 11305 and is all-in
Xstreme: calls 10855
*** SHOW DOWN ***
TheAtrox: shows [6d Ad] (two pair, Aces and Sixes)
Xstreme: shows [3c 7s] (a straight, Four to Eight)
Xstreme collected 23585 from pot

At the turn I see a min bet, so I raise cause "I have a pair, and maybe my opponent is bluffing." Doing a good job of following my plan for this hand so far huh? At the river when I saw the bet I thought "Get out." ahhh, if only I had listened...I then though "Thats a small bet, maybe I can get him to fold, besides I have a decent 2 pair now, I might be able to take it down anyways." Now good raise, or bad(my opinion is bad)...if I had stuck to playing my game as I intended to play it I would never have been IN that pot at all. That last all-in is the final action that busted me out. I say though that was NOT the reason I busted out though. Lack of DISCIPLINE is what I blame for busting out of a tourney that, up to that point I was doing pretty well in.

My game was working for me up to that point. I did one rebuy at the start of the tourney to start with 3k in chips, but I did not have to re-buy at ALL after that. My stack took a few small to mid sized hits along the way, but overall I was moving in the right direction. I didn't lose cause I got sucked out, or outdrawn, or because my opponent got lucky. I lost because I deviated from a *working* game plan. Most of my significant losses I can trace to this exact same type of mistake. I may play the hand perfectly, and still lose, but the fact is that if I was playing my "A" game I never would have played the hand to begin with.

I see a lot of people posting hands, and I do it also asking "Did I do this right, or wrong?". Before doing that though we should ask ourselves "Did I deviate from my game plan?" Playing every hand perfect means nothing if I'm playing the *wrong* hands perfectly.