So I didn’t get a chance to write yesterday as I was wrapped up in playing most of the evening. I learned a few interested things while I was playing and got some insight into areas I need to work on. First off I spent a good block of time watching early stage vids and reading articles in the “Early Stage” section of TPE University. In the words of Yoda, helpful it was, listen I did not. So that brings me to focus area #1:
1. I need to throttle back early stage play and tighten up.
I am way too frisky early on. There really isn’t a huge reason to get particularly active for no reason. If I have hands that can flop big and I identify people who are loose enough or crazy enough that I can stack that I can find a take opportunities. Without that information, tight is right. When I play turbo SnGs I seem to be able to hold on to this, regular tourneys and it goes right out the window. I start opening up my range pre-ante for the sake of playing and I don’t do it in a smart way. Time to make sure that I don’t keep this up. Okay, now that I see that issue this brings me to my second focus area:
2. Play my stack appropriately to the structure.
Corollary to 2: Play opponents stacks appropriately to the structure.
This one cost me last night in 2 big tourneys. I don’t look at the lobbies when I play as I don’t like to see how many are left and to avoid the temptation of looking at where I am in the field with my current stack. I remember from some of the videos with KB from my first go around at TPE getting punished for checking the lobby. It does turn out though that using the lobby to understand the structure, blind jumps and average stack is kind of important. I ended up getting over active and overplayed when I didn’t really have to as my 25-30bb stack late in the Nightly 5k was actually deep compared to the average stack (I believe it was ~13-15bb at that point). I put myself into a lot of really awful spots and increased my risk exposure a lot and I didn’t need to. Looking through what I did I really feel like I cost myself a good shot for a possible FT run because I got crazy. In the nightly $10 at 10 I did roughy the same thing, but more along the corollary line. I didn’t really understand what the other stacks at my table looked like in the overall picture. I just looked and said hey, we are all ~20bb stacks and this is looking for spots time and shove/fold. This was pretty deep for this point in the tourney and guys (right wrong or otherwise) were raising and folding still. I put a lot at risk by shoving because I transitioned too fast.
So all in all, I played a bunch of SnGs with good result, played a bunch of MTTs with less good results. Good thing that poker tournaments start all the time and there is always a second chance as long as you have the buy in. Well that is it for now, I’ll let you know how my focus on these areas goes in the next tourneys I play. Until then, good luck on the felt (virtual or otherwise) and I’ll see you all in chat!
LPG