Interesting repost from January of 2006
Mar 08, 2007 – 12:03PMSomeone requested a re-post of this since it was from Jan of 2006 it didn't get moved over. It was interesting in reading it how much it still applies today. Keep in mind I've grown a lot as a poker player since then, but I think this all still remains true. The original post was in response to many people asking what I felt I had learned at the PCA of 2006, my first live event ever:
I'm going to talk some about what I learned in the Bahamas, although at this point I think the suspense that was created by me not saying anything is going to make the actual information a bit of a letdown, it's not that earth shattering. First you'll have to listen to me talk about last night a little bit.
I had one cash in about 6 tournaments last night, in Super Monday for about $450. I think my win on Sunday may have clouded my judgement a bit as I think I may have gone a tad bit on the aggressive side, so I'm going to try and reel it in just a little tonight, but not too much.
Okay, those of you that talk to me regularly (especially Gobboboy) knows that one of the things I've always said is that if I could just do a better job of building my hour 1 stack I'd be a monster. Gobbo (sorry for using you as an example) always seems to go into the first break of most tournaments he plays (provided he makes the 1st break) with 2-3x the starting amount (sometimes more). I've always been a monster in the middle/late stages of the tournament, but until recently I just haven't been able to do a good job of building my initial stack, which really hurts since early on is when the bad players are giving their chips away, and it's tougher to get the chips from the better players later on.
At any rate, I had a bit of a revelation in the Bahamas watching pros and online experts alike play the big tournaments. Especially in live tournaments, it's very easy to identify who the weaker players at the table are. The ones you can push around post flop, the maniacs/calling stations who are going to give away their chips the first hour, and you want them to give the chips to you. In watching great live players I noticed they picked up on the weak players as well as I did, but they were making adjustments I wasn't. They were actively seeking to be in pots with these players with what had to be a HUGE range of hands. Sometimes they were even raising to isolate the tighter players who were easier to steal from post flop.
At any rate, I've always been of the general HoH and recommended poker strategy that in hour 1 'tight is right', and being in the Bahamas just blew that theory out of the water. There are definitely times where tight is right, but seeing what these players were doing I realized that if I could figure out early on who the weak players were at my online tables, and try and make sure their chips end up in my hands, it might improve my early tournament results.
Needless to say the early results are very positive. I'm almost always going into the first break with over double my starting chips, and often more than that. I honestly figured when I started doing this that the result might be I'd see the hour 1 break in less tournaments, but I've actually found myself making it that far more often, because I find myself playing a lot more 'small ball' and relying less on getting all in with good hands and more on winning a lot of small pots and hitting concealed hands.
I've found myself near the top of the chip counts much earlier on in tournaments, and oddly enough, I've been moneying and final tabling more consistently in January of this year so far than I did last year. It's a small sample size for sure, but so far so good. I think part of the key has not only been that I've been attacking the appropriate weaknesses from the weak players, but I've been doing so regardless of my cards. This doesn't mean I play foolishly, but if a calling station is in and I have a reasonable hand (and reasonable can me stuff like 78o) I'm playing. If a weak tightie has shown weakness I'm coming over the top of him. You often hear the phrase poker is 'everything but the cards'. Well, I still feel cards are a part of it, but I'm starting to get what that means more now. I honestly think that I could put a sticky note over my hole cards now and still make money playing tournaments. I obviously don't plan on trying that anytime soon, but the enhanced (I won't say newfound, because I've always been able to accumulate chips, I've just always done it by 'feel' and never with a 'plan' before like now) ability to win chips from different kinds of weak players with different strategies has been huge.
One of the questions I'm asked from players more often is how to accumulate chips early in the tournament. Up until now I honestly didn't know, and didn't have a good answer. This is going to sound very simple (and it's anything but simple to execute), but the bottom line is to accumulate chips early, you need to find the players you KNOW aren't going to last very long in the tournament, and make sure they give their chips to you, and not someone else.
You can also think of it this way. In general (but obviously not always, there is a luck factor involved) as tournaments progress, the weaker players bust out, and the stronger players keep going. While it's rarely true that the final 2 players are the two very best players that entered the tournament, you can be pretty sure it's not the 2 worst players. So if, in theory, as you progress through tournaments the field continually gets tougher, then it stands to reason that you would want to take every opportunity to let the weaker players donate to you before they bust out and give their chips to the stronger players, who will be tougher to wrestle them away from.
At any rate, this really isn't anything earth shattering, and in all honesty I knew most of this information before I ever left for the Bahamas. For whatever reason though, it just clicked while I was down there watching some great players build huge stacks early on. A lot of things in my poker life have happened that way, and in life in general. You can know something for fact in your head, and it kind of makes sense, but then one day it clicks and all the sudden it just all makes sense, kind of a poker or life epiphany if you will. I had one of those while I was down there, and while I'm not sure it's possible to have a better 2006 than I had 2005, I certainly feel my game has grown light years in the last 6-9 months, and am anxious to see where it takes me in the coming year(s).
-Rizen
I had one cash in about 6 tournaments last night, in Super Monday for about $450. I think my win on Sunday may have clouded my judgement a bit as I think I may have gone a tad bit on the aggressive side, so I'm going to try and reel it in just a little tonight, but not too much.
Okay, those of you that talk to me regularly (especially Gobboboy) knows that one of the things I've always said is that if I could just do a better job of building my hour 1 stack I'd be a monster. Gobbo (sorry for using you as an example) always seems to go into the first break of most tournaments he plays (provided he makes the 1st break) with 2-3x the starting amount (sometimes more). I've always been a monster in the middle/late stages of the tournament, but until recently I just haven't been able to do a good job of building my initial stack, which really hurts since early on is when the bad players are giving their chips away, and it's tougher to get the chips from the better players later on.
At any rate, I had a bit of a revelation in the Bahamas watching pros and online experts alike play the big tournaments. Especially in live tournaments, it's very easy to identify who the weaker players at the table are. The ones you can push around post flop, the maniacs/calling stations who are going to give away their chips the first hour, and you want them to give the chips to you. In watching great live players I noticed they picked up on the weak players as well as I did, but they were making adjustments I wasn't. They were actively seeking to be in pots with these players with what had to be a HUGE range of hands. Sometimes they were even raising to isolate the tighter players who were easier to steal from post flop.
At any rate, I've always been of the general HoH and recommended poker strategy that in hour 1 'tight is right', and being in the Bahamas just blew that theory out of the water. There are definitely times where tight is right, but seeing what these players were doing I realized that if I could figure out early on who the weak players were at my online tables, and try and make sure their chips end up in my hands, it might improve my early tournament results.
Needless to say the early results are very positive. I'm almost always going into the first break with over double my starting chips, and often more than that. I honestly figured when I started doing this that the result might be I'd see the hour 1 break in less tournaments, but I've actually found myself making it that far more often, because I find myself playing a lot more 'small ball' and relying less on getting all in with good hands and more on winning a lot of small pots and hitting concealed hands.
I've found myself near the top of the chip counts much earlier on in tournaments, and oddly enough, I've been moneying and final tabling more consistently in January of this year so far than I did last year. It's a small sample size for sure, but so far so good. I think part of the key has not only been that I've been attacking the appropriate weaknesses from the weak players, but I've been doing so regardless of my cards. This doesn't mean I play foolishly, but if a calling station is in and I have a reasonable hand (and reasonable can me stuff like 78o) I'm playing. If a weak tightie has shown weakness I'm coming over the top of him. You often hear the phrase poker is 'everything but the cards'. Well, I still feel cards are a part of it, but I'm starting to get what that means more now. I honestly think that I could put a sticky note over my hole cards now and still make money playing tournaments. I obviously don't plan on trying that anytime soon, but the enhanced (I won't say newfound, because I've always been able to accumulate chips, I've just always done it by 'feel' and never with a 'plan' before like now) ability to win chips from different kinds of weak players with different strategies has been huge.
One of the questions I'm asked from players more often is how to accumulate chips early in the tournament. Up until now I honestly didn't know, and didn't have a good answer. This is going to sound very simple (and it's anything but simple to execute), but the bottom line is to accumulate chips early, you need to find the players you KNOW aren't going to last very long in the tournament, and make sure they give their chips to you, and not someone else.
You can also think of it this way. In general (but obviously not always, there is a luck factor involved) as tournaments progress, the weaker players bust out, and the stronger players keep going. While it's rarely true that the final 2 players are the two very best players that entered the tournament, you can be pretty sure it's not the 2 worst players. So if, in theory, as you progress through tournaments the field continually gets tougher, then it stands to reason that you would want to take every opportunity to let the weaker players donate to you before they bust out and give their chips to the stronger players, who will be tougher to wrestle them away from.
At any rate, this really isn't anything earth shattering, and in all honesty I knew most of this information before I ever left for the Bahamas. For whatever reason though, it just clicked while I was down there watching some great players build huge stacks early on. A lot of things in my poker life have happened that way, and in life in general. You can know something for fact in your head, and it kind of makes sense, but then one day it clicks and all the sudden it just all makes sense, kind of a poker or life epiphany if you will. I had one of those while I was down there, and while I'm not sure it's possible to have a better 2006 than I had 2005, I certainly feel my game has grown light years in the last 6-9 months, and am anxious to see where it takes me in the coming year(s).
-Rizen
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