So, I have officially given up ring games (at least for the time being). I really like playing in tournaments - the players are just so bad. Matt was watching yesterday when I pushed all-in with a medium-short stack with AJ in middle position and was called by an average stack holding ATs. Nobody seems to understand the GAP concept - and that is basically my rule of play in tournaments (as well as most good players). I'll raise with about any two cards if I think I have a pretty good shot at stealing, but I definitely will not call raises (or all-ins) with AQ or worse.
I have spent the past few days trying to get a handle on the two basic starting strategies - 1) play tight until the blinds/antes get big enough to steal; then try to steal enough blinds to get enough chips to get to the final table; 2) play loose early in the tournament (in position) with hands that are easy to play after the flop (and are generally sneaky); get enough chips early to steal blinds/antes without much risk due to being one of the chip leaders.
In both strategies, I avoid getting all-in with anything less than 2-pair or a 40%+ draw (or AA, KK preflop), I avoid playing pots with big stacks, and I avoid playing hands like AQ, AJ, KQ, or KJ until the blinds get really high (and then I have to be the raiser in late position or be REALLY short).
I like the second strategy much more because people overplay their hands and underbet boards with draws. Only in tournaments will you hit the nut flush and then get raised all-in by your opponents. :P Two times yesterday, I had Ax suited. The board came AxT, giving me two pair and a back door flush. The turn hit my flush draw. I got multiple players all-in both times. And they couldn't beat two pair (usually having a lower flush draw). Just amazingly great.
-----
Anyway, the point of this post was to inquire about good tournament opportunities. I basically want to play in every 100k+ tournament online, which has satelites. Pokerstars doesn't seem to have a lot of satelites - but it seems like Full Tilt and Party Poker have a ton. I seem to play the same in cheap events as more expensive ones, so I am trying to be as smart with my bankroll as possible - playing in cheap events to qualify for the real events. I'm hoping to get to a point where I'm basicaly playing in about 25+, 100K+ events every week (all from qualifiers/satelites).
So far I have won/cashed in 13 out of 60 tournaments. My biggest cash has been about $600 with a 1st in a Party Monster qualifier and I've won 4 party poker Sunday million qualifiers for $215 each. I've also bubbled around 20 times, so I'll need to get a lot more results to get an idea of the long term.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
What sunday million qualifiers do you play?
I play any that have buy-ins of about $3 to $11. Many of them are rebuys - and I usually rebuy a few times because you usually will be able to get all-in with the best hand, but then I often will lose the hand anyway. :P
Today I spent about $186 in tournament buy-ins and rebuys/addons. I won two $215 tickets. I get cash for one of them - and the other one buys me into next weeks tournament. (I got knocked out in 1244 out of 5030 in today's).
I also cashed in a few - but didn't win the whole buyin. I ended up being up about $60 cash for the day (& the tourney ticket)
There is no way u can get into 25 different 100K+ tourneys in a week..you probably made a typo and meant to put 2 or 5 a week. But as far as I know, the 3 biggest online tournaments are on different sites on the same day at the same time (Party, Stars and FT). The other sites aren't big enough to have these huge tourneys and usually only have one of these once in awhile.
Party has a 100k event every day, a 200k on sat., and a million on sunday.
Full tilt also has a million on sunday, and occassionally has 250K events.
Poker Stars also has a million on sunday, and occassionally other events.
On the Poker Network they have like a 50K or 100K a few times a week.
I realize that it will be difficult to find as many as would be ideal, but I'm hoping that I can. I figure if I can win one of these bigger events a month, I would be making enough money to never play another ring game. :)
And I should say "cash at the final table" or even last few tables - because honestly winning a tournament is no easy task...
I don't agree that your bad hands need to win. I do think you need to be running well to win a tournament, but in the sense that you get dealt a fair ammount of good hands and they hold up. Not that you go in with your money behind.
Post a Comment