$200 buy in tournament

So I'm now in this tournament playing a variation of poker called Razz. I won a buy-in from a smaller tournament. When I won the buy-in, I asked if I could just convert my winnings into real money. Unfortunately it's not allowed. And so I'm here now.

For weeks, the tournament stood at ~300 players, and it had a prize pool of $100,000. I recon the first prize is probably $20,000. As I checked in 30 minutes before the start of the tournament, it bloated up to 1200 players with a 240k prize pool. Wow! And the first prize now pays a little under 60k.

One thing that surprised me too was the tournament structure. In the satellites, the ante's and bring-ins (mandatory fees to start a round of betting), grow quickly (10-15 minute intervals) and so you have to try and gamble more often with less than spectacular hands or otherwise, your chip stack will be withered away by the antes and bring-ins. This tournament has a much slower structure (30 minutes before the antes and bring-ins increase). And you start with more chips than usual. So the action will be a little bit slow and you can afford to wait for more premium hands.

I had an initial strategy entering the tournament. I figured I would play very tight and wait for strong hands but with this structure, you really need to get your feet wet and be part of the action.

55 minutes:
So far, I'm up to 2800 in chips up 300 from the initial stack of 2500. It will be a slow grind. My table is kind of tight, so I have to tangle a little bit. There's two people who seem to like to bluff a lot. Let me get in with a premium hand and I can probably break them.

5 minute break at the 1hr mark:
So, it's the first break, and now I'm able to go to the restroom and do misc. things.

As I wait, let me write about my style of play in Razz. My philosophy in Razz has always been: Make as few mistakes as possible. Razz, unlike Texas Hold'Em is a game of patience. You cannot out muscle people out of pots as easily as you can in Hold'Em. So you oftentimes have to wait for premium hands. If you go in with less, you stand a big chance of losing a big chunk of your stack. Sure, there's an element of luck and your opponent can get extremely lucky on you and vice versa, but going in with a strong hand at least lessens those wild swings.

1h 30m:
I rocketed to the chip leader of my table with 4200. So far, I had two big hands where I didn't get _unlucky_ to lose. Sometimes, you have a sure thing and it gets snatched away from you by a miracle card your opponent happen to catch. So far that hasn't happened to me.

2nd break at the 2h mark:
Time to get some drinks and freshen up!

I didn't advance a lot in the last 30 minutes. I fluctuated from 3900 to 4600 ending up at 4500. And I'm currently 99th place out of the remaining 1219 players still in the tourney. Not bad.

I'm kind of experiencing a little bit of fatigue. Hopefully, I'm still ok in the next hour or two.

2h 35m:
I ran into a couple of tough situations where I got a little bit unlucky and lost. My chip stack shrank from 4500 to a mere 2300 now. I'm still in the game, but the buffer I built up has thinned up a bit.

3rd break at the end of hour 3:
I was at one point down to 900 chips. Fortunately, the last hand I was in more than doubled me up back to 2260. At this point, I need to really be sure of my hands, since the ante's and bring-ins will be higher. Action will be fast in the next rounds.

There are 866 players left and the chip leader is at 12,500. I need to cover a lot of ground.

4th break:
I'm at 3700 chips at the moment. I actually made a good run up to around 6000 chips before I lost some of it in a big hand. The tourney's down to 508 players. And at this point, the big stacks (around 25,000 at this point) should be looking to elminate the little guys (like me!). But I have to just play at the top of my wits and hopefully I win something big.

5h:
I went to as much as 10,000. But then a couple of tough hands brought me down to 4k. After that, I couldn't catch something until I am finally eliminated--finishing 361st out of 1297. Not bad.

On my final hand, I had very bad cards, but I knew my opponent was even worse. I went all in and when the cards were turned, I was correct. I had the better hand, but a card on the river saved my opponent while I didn't improve. Oh well, it had been fun. And I'm exhausted. Time to have some R&R.