I read you article and I entered two small MTT's and got knocked out bybad beats both times.

It happens - My AA was beat by AQo with a runner flush.

I was short stacked 50/100 and rasised allin with K9d after EP player put in 350 He had QJo and won with a runner straight.

K9d is not a good hand to go allin with but I was down to 700 chips.

I will keep at it.

What I did tonight was to play tight.

I played 2 hands so far - 1 hour and 16 minutes. I had JJ and won about 300 - my stack was 1850.

I clicked sit out and went to watch TV. I came backan hour later just in time for the BB and picked up 99. I flopped a set and doubled up. I had 3600 chips.

The blinds are now 50/100 and I am playing. No hands so far. Just mucked AJ UTG.

I am waiting for the good hands to come.

Thanks - I have never played this tight in my life. 76 hands and saw the flop 10 times. I played 2 hands. That means that my BB was not raised 8 times while I was gone.

MTT's are tough.

Here is my other MTT -

Here is my final hands for this MTT - I was doing sooooo goooooood then went on tilt.

I blew it because I was tilting - read angry.

MTT $26 FTP - played tight, I think

- won
- lost $500 - bad play.
- raised and won blinds.
-BB - checked - straight won nice pot.
- BB - Quads 9A9xx - beat AA won - 4,800
Blinds 60/100
BB - bluffed won $100
SB - lost
BB - lost
BB - lost
Blinds 80/160
- raised, flopped a set and won - 8,965
- lost
BB - lost
- Turned quads and won - stack 9,625 way better than average - largest 12,000.
- MP raised, flopped Q and put the BB all in on the Turn river 5 - ouch

TILT

Blinds 120/240 w/25 antes (585 pot to start - M=9.5)

5,615 chips - all in with pocket pair against 2 others (chance to go to 16,000 chips) but out at 35.

I had enough chips to make it to 18 at least. Just got angry and lost. All I had to do was to tighten up - 18th place pays and the chip count is 3,200 at 19th place. I had enought to get there but I wanted to win it.

I can not win MTTs - I get down to about 76 - they pay 36 and I get in the red zone - chips below M=5.

I find a hand that I like and go with it. All - in on the flop and out I go.

I can not get past the red zone. 160/240 and 25 ante - 585 and I have 5600 chips. I put in 600 on the flop and now the pot has more money than I have.

If I get below an M of 4 and I double I am still short stacked.

I played about 6 hands tonight. I won 3. .

Played 8% of my hands - KK on the button and ran into AA UTG - out at 74th.

I can not win MTT's.

Played 9 hands and won 8 until my last hand.

I think this is tight 2 1/2 hours.

Dealt to AlamedaMike folds
Dealt to AlamedaMike folds
Dealt to AlamedaMike calls 60 *** FLOP *** [Kd 8s 9d] won
Dealt to AlamedaMike raises to 90 won
Dealt to AlamedaMike raises to 90 won
Dealt to AlamedaMike calls 100 *** FLOP *** [Kd 6d 9c] won
Dealt to AlamedaMike raises to 160 won
Dealt to AlamedaMike folds
Dealt to AlamedaMike folds
Dealt to AlamedaMike raises to 300 wins the pot (250)
Dealt to AlamedaMike folds
Dealt to AlamedaMike folds
Dealt to AlamedaMike raises to 360 wins the pot (300)
Dealt to AlamedaMike raises to 720 *** FLOP *** [3h Td Jc] won (3,620)
Dealt to AlamedaMike checks lost
Dealt to AlamedaMike folds

Then this hand.

FullTiltPoker Game: $10 + $1 Tournament , Table 3 - 100/200 - No Limit Hold'em - 2005/10/14
Seat 1: pesby (6,050)
Seat 3: the STAR (15,450)
Seat 4: coyotejones (5,190)
Seat 5: igotyermoney (2,240)
Seat 6: ShilXye (6,835)
Seat 7: Doggydog21 (4,895)
Seat 8: baz33 (9,833)
Seat 9: AlamedaMike (2,680)
pesby posts the small blind of 100
the STAR posts the big blind of 200
The button is in seat #9
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to AlamedaMike
coyotejones raises to 600
igotyermoney folds
ShilXye folds
Doggydog21 folds
baz33 folds
AlamedaMike raises to 1,200
pesby folds
the STAR folds
baz33: nice reraise
coyotejones raises to 3,000

Now I am in trouble - 1480 if I fold. Its over now. I will have M=4.

AlamedaMike calls 1,480, and is all in
coyotejones shows
AlamedaMike shows
Uncalled bet of 320 returned to coyotejones
*** FLOP ***
*** TURN ***
*** RIVER ***
coyotejones shows a pair of Aces
AlamedaMike shows a pair of Kings
coyotejones wins the pot (5,660) with a pair of Aces
AlamedaMike stands up

Statistics for 115 Hands

Street Saw Saw/Total
Flop 10 9%
Turn 5 4%
River 3 3%
Showdown 3 3%

Street Won Won/Saw Won/Total
Pre-flop 5 4% 4%
Flop 0 0% 0%
Turn 1 20% 1%
River 0 0% 0%
Showdown 2 67% 2%

Mike, tournies are a royal pain in the arse. I played a variety of buy - in's from $1 - 30 dollars for almost a year (played tournies as a diversion, cash games mostly) and finally just over a year after playing I won a tourny for 1300 on bodog, not even a week later I won one again for 625. I was then like dang, I have these figured out, and naturally go on not having a significant cash since. Closest I have been to final table was the other day when my KK lost to a guy that limped called 1/4 of his stack with ace 9. He flopped two nines and I go out in 17th. Point is, tournies have high variance.

The trick is to conserve chips and then get aggressive in position once the blinds get to 50-100/75-150. People start folding on the flop much more then rather than chasing. At times, you will have to raise in position and if they check, jam with air and hope they can't call. Other times, if you have more chips, you can make the standard continuation bet. Watch the two guys to your left, see what kind of raises they fold too, and you can even expand to the 4 guys to your left. Another trick that you need sometimes is the resteal. Watch for the alpha dog at your table(the guy raising far too often), pick a hand and jam him after he raises (preferrably do this from blinds or button) and hope he doesn't have a legit hand. Resteals are sketchy tho at the under 15 buy in range as most people call.

Look for spots to try a squeeze play. It actually does work. Along the same vein, try to isolate an ep all in if you have ak/aq or pockets and you think you can make the pot heads up. If you force out another caller, it just adds more potential dead money to the pot.

One other thing, is that don't be afraid to take the cointoss early, in an effort to double up. Online tourny stacks arent very deep by level 4 or 5. Go broke early, big deal. Reraise ep raises/mp raises with jj/qq/kk/aa or ak in late position. You can consider smooth calling with aa or kk sometimes but alot of times this leads to trouble. The pot just gets too big vs the chipstacks. Reraising on the button wins alot of pots. Note again that you can repop with air if the guy you are reraising is highly active preflop.

Try to steal if you can(obviously), just don't get to tied to marginal steal hands that can trap you. AQ/AJ/KQ etc. You can lay your hand down and still have a chance. Obviously at some point you need to shove, but try to avoid being all in preflop as long as humanly possible unless you figure to be flipping a coin at worst.

Naturallly you can just wait for the cards to come to you, but most the time you won't have that luxury. Figure a 200 man tourny, at best before you hit the money, you will get dealt 160-180 hands. That means it is fairly likely you won't see aces and or kings.

When you M gets low, I know Harrington advocates pushing with any two, but I find that it is better to pick a spot and go with a hand that is less likely to be dominated. 89, 78, 65 etc or at least grab an ace and go (even tho u will be crushed alot). The other important factor in low buy in tournies is that alot of people will limp in with a small pocket pair then call and all in for 20/30/40/50% of their stack because they figure coin toss at worst. Therefore, at least try to shove as first in, not over a limper.

Lastly, I watched you play in a 10+1 the other night on Full Tilt (unless your screenname isn't AlameadaMike ) and I saw that you had run your stack to ~2000 early. I watched you limp in alot in either ep or lp then fold to a raise or call a min raise then chuck your hand on the flop. That is just bleeding chips. I used to splash around alot like that as well and have now realized given blinds/stacks you can't afford too. Say you squander 200 chips limping and an opportunity comes up when you get it all in and win for a true double up. 2k goes to 4k, 1800 goes to 3600. You have effectively cost yourself 400 chips by splashing around. If people respected position more, limping late would be much higher ev. Yet in lower buy in tournies, they just don't seem to care.

I realize some of what I said here may not make sense, but in a tourny, you have to try and utilize a whole range of tools and yes, sometimes go broke or get lucky with a sub optimal hand. Cards will come eventually but you can't count on em to bail you out either.

I apologize for rambling, but yet again, I've been drinking.

Good luck.

Well, I be danged - thanks guys for taking the time to reply in such detail. Very good advice there horshak.

About 4 years ago I was a student at PokerSchool until their s/w crashed my machine a few times. Yes, MTT's are very tough.

There is, as you pointed out, more strategy than good cards.

I was bleeding chips as you said so I stopped that. As you can see on my last MTT I won 8 of may hands and only 2 at showdown.

The last hand was a mistake as it turned out.

Everytime I have made it to the final table there were one or two hands in the middle where I got lucky and made a lot of chips.

Very tough road indeed.. I am going to play the S&G for the money and play the MTT free rolls as much as possible.

I have no plans to quit or go on tilt - it is just hard. Heck, what do I expect. I have played maybe at most 50 trounaments in my life. Won first place 2 times and been on the final table a few times.

Thanks again,

One thing not mentioned that may help is to add a couple of "no poker" days to your weekly schedule. By that I mean no playing, no reading, no watching on tv, no discussion boards. I realize it is difficult when you are so passionate about playing. However, you must give yourself time to process and evaluate your play and the number of hands you're seeing in multiple tourneys is getting quite large. Just a suggestion, as it took me almost two years to figure out I was truly overwhelmed by the amount of info that was pouring in from all sources. Give it a try. If you find it difficult to spend a day away from the game, then get help.
By the way, I felt compelled to start posting after following this site for a year now. I am in debt to all of you that continually post, as my game has improved with your advice. I enjoy seeing your play in tourneys knowing that you are gifted players. I must admit, I have used your posts against you a couple of times (mainly in the sng's). Thanks again.

wow - first post. Welcome.

Very good point about taking a break. I will give it a try. It is hard to not think about 'poker' away from the tables. It might take some time to do that.

I will sometimes review one or two plays that I had trouble with for several hours.

You must take a vacation yearly from poker for sure to let the mind relax.