As regular readers of the blog will realise, whereas I have had great success this year with online MTTs over 1000+ games averaging 100%+ roi on multiple sites, I have been struggling a lot with live poker MTTs. Now I can attribute some of this to running bad in races and what have you. But it would be totally naive to believe that my game is perfect and everyone else is just a bunch of massive luckbox fish.
As such, after my monthly donation to the DTD £300 this month, I have done a lot of thinking, going through the hands I played and thinking about various alternate options I could have taken in all the significant hands I've played. This month I managed to do pretty well, getting down to the final 90/275 runners but losing a race with AK to 99. As I said, I could just blame this on bad luck, think everyone else is crap and I just run bad. But instead, I am taking this recent bad run of cards to reflect particularly on my live game.
Here are 5 key areas where I think I can improve. And I will try really hard to improve upon for my next live tournament; the £1090 DTD Monte Carlo later on this month.
1) play more solid, dont get involved with mediocre holdings out of position in tournaments where u cant reload ur stack. It's too easy in live tournaments to see yourself slowly being ante'd away and not playing a hand in 2 orbits makes a8suited under the gun look like a very playable hand. Nope, nope, nope. Muck it and smile.
2) dont limp behind speculative hands like 8 10o 100bb deep in late position, will just get me in trouble and i wont flop 2 pair/straight and get paid off enough to make it worthwhile
3) keep hand reading and putting people on ranges when not in the hand (i do this quite well)
4) patience, dont raise marginal hands from early position as much as unlike online more people like to see the flop with hands they should be folding so its not as effective (like raising kjs UTG+1 with antes)
5) If limping behind with say with Q10s on the button to 3-4 limpers, then some guy in the blinds raises it up but everyone calls. I think there is much less value in calling with such a dominated hand the majority of the time despite the preflop value.
Basically, most of these points come down to patience, and not rushing to get into lots of pots with big post-flop decisions. The live tournaments Im playing these days are all deep-stacks with good structures. There is no need for me to be getting myself involved in super-marginal decisions when I can wait for more optimal spots and exploit the leaks that a lot of live recreational players seem to have).
I think a fair bit of this comes in the little ways I play. Such as when the cards are dealt, I look at one as soon as it is dealt then look at the other. I don't agree at the moment with looking at my cards when its my turn to act as I'm scared of giving information away from timing tells, and like to think about how I'm going to play my particular hand as the action before me unfolds. I do however think that looking at each card individually as its dealt (as I currently do) is also pretty bad. I think it leads to further impatience live when you get dealt an ace to receive a rag kicker and I start to get annoyed how every hand I'm dealt seems to be pretty shit.
I'm very happy with my short-stack play, and if I incorporate some of the other points I mentioned above, I see no reason why I can't have great success in the live arena.
Anyway! It's Sunday so that's online grinding day. I watched a video of TravestyFund last night, who is a very very sick grinder whose game I have a lot of respect for. His thought process is so decent, so I hope some of it runs off into my game tonight and I ship something big. I'm not playing as many tournaments as I usually would on a Sunday and am instead focusing on quality rather than quantity. Bring it on.
