Tournament Improvement
This is my second post on the canadian poker forum... A little about myself. I have been playing poker for about 4 years with about the last 2 being a lot more serious ,but I am still a recreational player... I mostly play low limit on line at stars but do play live when ever I get the chance. I am beating the game so far since i started keeping track..(last two years) but I am not killing the game by any means.. (Less than 1BB/hour) What I am is a losing tournament player...My live tourny play is limited to the weekly tourney at the Emerald at Saskatoon Sk which I used to attend regularly but my work now limits my attendance.. I usually try to attend at least 2 of the 3 Regina tournies every year and I have been able to attend Edmontons big tournies this last year. I truely enjoy playing tournments but think I would love them if I could beat them (LOL).... I can beat the $5, $10, SNGs at stars but am not killing them by any means either (just over 20%ROI)...For my online MTT I mainly stick to the small buyin large feild types... I do realize that the variance in tournament play can Kill even the best tourny players and maybe I am just running bad...As much as I would like to beleive this is the problem, I doubt that it is. I am going to post some tourny situations I am in as they happen and see if U guys can help me out... It may be a couple of weeks until I post some, as I am off to work again for a couple of weeks. :frown:
I guess my question I am trying to ask is that players who beat the MTT consistently have U moved/gone through a learning curve or could U beat them instantly then just improved on your skills from there. I beleive my initial MTT results where better than they are now,(But I have no proof just memory of wins etc) that I have studied and kept track of results. .....Also how many MTT at say the $3 level with a 1000 entrants would you nead to play to get into the long run ,or close enough to the long run?
I guess my question I am trying to ask is that players who beat the MTT consistently have U moved/gone through a learning curve or could U beat them instantly then just improved on your skills from there. I beleive my initial MTT results where better than they are now,(But I have no proof just memory of wins etc) that I have studied and kept track of results. .....Also how many MTT at say the $3 level with a 1000 entrants would you nead to play to get into the long run ,or close enough to the long run?
Comments
stp
I'm reluctant to classify myself as a player who beats MTT's consistently. I think that everybody here would probably be reluctant to classify themselves as such, because tournament results can be pretty streaky. Like, say, a streak of 3 months where you don't win, and then a streak of 1 day where you do, and what you won in one day makes up for even a year's worth of losses.
Dave Scharf is probably the exception to this: he has played for long enough, and won consistently enough, that he could probably get away with calling himself a consistent MTT winner. If he doesn't think so, it doesn't matter, because the rest of us do, and that's all that counts.
That being said (and that might have been the biggest disclaimer, ever), I've won my fair share, more consistently in the last year, so I'll take a stab at this.
Learning curve? Ohhhh yeah. Still going through it, lol. You can't learn how to be successful at every kind of poker (shorthanded cash games, full cash games, NL MTT tournaments, SNG tournaments, limit tournaments, etc...) at once. At least, I couldn't. My personal experience is that it's best to try and focus on one thing at a time.
Posting here helps a lot, and so does reading books. Playing online is a GREAT way to improve your MTT skills, because there are so damn many of them, at so many limits, happening all the time. You get to play with every different kind of player, you get to see roughly 870,000 hands/hr, and you end up facing some critical 'deep-in-the-money' tough decisions, where 'conventional' strategy goes out the window in favour of analyzing your situation relative to your opponents', and weighing that against your objectives.
When I took a break from shorthanded cash games, my intention was to improve my MTT game, and focus on that for a while. The shorthanded skills are still there, but they're a little rusty. It's like riding a bicycle... you may leave it behind for a long time, but you never forget how to do it. It's just a bit of a wobbly ride, at first.
So, I'd suggest that if you want to improve your MTT results you should play more MTT's than cash games, and you should focus your reading there as well. Read your hand histories, and if you're having trouble figuring out whether or not you made the right play in a tough situation, post a hand or two here and I'm sure you'll get all the help you need. There are truly some very talented players here.
When it comes to tournaments, 'the long run' is a very long run indeed. World-class players can go for a year without placing in the money. It's the nature of the beast... you get that many players involved, and even the best players could go through a looooong cold streak. It's important to look at your specific situations, and determine if you have leaks in your game, or if you've just been unlucky. Leaks can only be fixed if you know about them. That is not to suggest that your game is particularly 'leaky'... EVERYONE has some leaks. Nobody's perfect. But, we should try to control the things that we can in poker, and one of those things is the ability to analyze our own plays, and make the appropriate adjustments.
Regards,
all_aces