The other week I played in the Sunday Milion over at PokerStars.

I hadn't had a crack at a big 'ol Sunday tourney in a while, so I figured it was worth a bash.

I played ok, but narrowly missed the cash and I won't bore you here with the hows and whys here.

But I did manage to grab a screenshot that should make every budding durrrr or Isildur1's blood turn ice cold.

You have to be aggressive right? You have to take down lots of pots early in these tournaments so you can lose the odd flip, right?

Wrong.

Just take a look at this screengrab.

This was taken during the second level, less than half a pipe of Pringles into the tournament. 

Yours truly hadn't even played a single hand (once you pop...).

The guy two seats to my left moves all-in preflop. Weird, so early in a $215 buy-in event, but I guess he has a monster. Then the small blind calls. Weird. Then the big blind calls. Cosmic.

At this point, I'm guessing there has to be some seriously loose play going on. Maybe a fish running into two huge hands?Two fish? A shoal?

Then they turn over.

Queens plays Kings plays Aces.

Astonishing.

For once, the Aces held. But what a total nightmare for the two guys who saw an opportunity to double-up early...and ended up taking an early bath.

The moral? Forget what you see Tom Dwan and Viktor Blom doing with J♥, 10♣ preflop when they're playing for silly money online.

The Sunday Million is the real world. It's played by real people, with real jobs, to whom $215 is a very real sum of money.

Clowns and proper fish are few and far between. People at this level play good solid positional poker and tend to only make a move when they hit something.

So play these mega events, sure, but go into them with your eyes open.

The kind of hands that win you big pots at lower levels are likely to kill you before too long when people are playing with their kids' college money.

Use that fear of losing against them, but be smart. Because, at worst, they probably have a couple of ladies up their sleeve...