tournament coaching

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Yugless

United States. Jul 23 2007 09:12. Posts 7174

While I'm very happy and proud of all of the people here who have been having so much success in tournaments, I'm also jealous and I wish I was able to have that success.

I'm a successful sit and go pla<x>yer, I've handily beaten every level I've played in cash up to 3/6 and a few successful shots at 5/10, but I'm a lifetime loser in tournaments. Back when I was strictly a sit and go pla<x>yer I had a few decent tournament scores, but since I've been a cash pla<x>yer my tournament game has really suffered.

I've put some effort in to becoming good at tournaments, just like I did in cash games. Especially when I was playing sit and goes because back then I believed the top tournament pla<x>yers were the best poker pla<x>yers in the world and i really aspired to be a great tournament pla<x>yer. So I watched some of the great pla<x>yers and I read some books. There seemed to be 2 predominant st<x>yles of successful tournament pla<x>yers - old school conservative pla<x>yer, young aggressive pla<x>yer.

The old school conservative pla<x>yer (T.J. Cloutier) outlines a very conservative, even weak/tight game in his book. I had success playing like that in low limit sit and gos because the pla<x>yer are so painfully bad, and I also had some mild success in tournaments playing like that. But the really successful online tournament pla<x>yers (Mig) don't play like that. They're aggressive, they put people to tough decisions, they gladly take marginally +EV spots that the old school pla<x>yers avoid. In short they play good tight and aggressive poker.

Now this should be an easy transition for me because I'm a good tight and aggressive cash game pla<x>yer, but it's not. The aggressive plays that work in cash games don't seem to work in tournaments, for a few reasons that I can see.

1.average tournament pla<x>yers tend to be much worse than cash game pla<x>yers so advanced plays tend not to work on simple pla<x>yers.
2.if I make a failed bluff in a cash game I reload without bl<x>inking and reap the rewards of my new donkey image, if I do it in a tournament I'm crippled.
3.tournaments are largely played on short stacks.

Looking at the factors above, I come to a natural conclusion. Old school conservative poker is best for tournaments. If I was playing against a bunch of really bad shortstacks in a cash game I would leave my bag of tricks at home and I would play very standard basic poker, and I would usually have their money after a short time. I wouldn't play as conservative as it says to play in TJ's book, still taking any +EV spot I can and being very aggressive when I think I may have the best hand, but keeping things pretty simple and not bluffing much is the best approach in that situation.

So it looks like I have it all figured out. There's only one problem. I suck at tournaments.

If anyone has read through all of this babble, have any of you had coaching from Mig or any other tournament pla<x>yer? Do you recommend it? What about something like pokerxfactor? Is it possible because of tournament variance that I am a good tournament pla<x>yer already? I don't play very often but when I do I just get killed every time.

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Baal - look is talking hah.