Hello, need tips and Guidance for MTTs holdem

Hello there!

I (finally) decided to join a poker community website, I should have done it ages ago, and in general just take poker more seriously, read about it, not just rely on my instinct and style.

I really want to learn everything there is about holdem, especially MTTs (probably 98% of what I've played so far).

I'm 24 years old french guy (sadly, with our wonderful nationalized poker, we cant play online in non french poker rooms in case you didnt know...), I've been playing poker since I was 16 17 (yes it was illegal), but I've mostly played in a serious mindset when I was about 19/20. I've always been interested in the fact that, good players would beat the odds, would end up winning wsop out of thousands of players. It fascinated me, and well, the money too obviously .

I am a tight agressive player, still trying to find my style, I play 90% of my MTTS are 5 and 10.

It has always been a love/hate story between me and poker. Sometimes I'm confident, I feel good about playing, sometimes I cant find the motivation (mostly because of the awful level at low limits, it just gets to me sometimes to see terrible players "dominating" tables just by playing 85% of their hand until someone gets a hand and kick them out or double on them, it ruins what I enjoy in poker, sets me in a bad mood even if my tournament isnt affected by it most of the time) but thats something I have to work on I know, playing MTTs would be impossible otherwise , at low limits at least and I dont have the funds and lifestyle to support a big bankroll.

I never had huge prizes, I'm up for about 9000 euros, I won 5 decent tournaments (entry*prizes : 3*1500 (rebuy/addon) - 10*900 - 10*850 - 10*850 - 5*450) but never huge ones, even tho I've been to few final tables of 20 000 prizepool tournaments (I'd say 8 or 9 final table finishes). I didnt play religiously because of my mood swings and my doubts in my ability to perform.
And I arrive at a stage of my life where poker is essential for me, I need to make this work (I know this doesnt sound good and people shouldnt rely on poker without great skills and knowledge) but I cant find a job, and I need to earn a minimum playing poker, I'm not talking 5K a month, 500+ would be enough for me to plan a better future and if possible climb up the poker ladder . For that I am ready to devote myself, 12 hours a day if I need to, and try to learn as much as I can while trying to get better, and this why I'm here .

I would appreciate any tips, conversations, or even good reads that you guys could suggest, because I'm pretty lost as where to go to improve my game and find some stability in my play.

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TLDR = MTT TAG player 5/10 (sometimes 20 but rare) entries with medium experience (about 9000 won over 4 years, on and off obviously), some decent perfomances so far but still a lot of uncertainty as what to improve and where to look.
Need good books / videos / articles to read, and just any tips you guys could give me, I'll of course try to read the forums, and find some of it by myself, but so far I've been unlucky in my research, ending up reading books that did not help me with online MTTs at these limits etc etc.
I'd really appreciate any help I could get and will hang around here for quite some time I think, by advance thank you!

Wow.. First of all let me say welcome to CC. You sound like you are very motivated and inspired to commit, and actually make something of yourself involving poker( you remind me of myself). We all know poker has its ups and downs and huge variance swings but if your game is up to par, it can be very profitable in the long run. If your game is at least standard(in which you say it is) then the first thing I would tell you is to be patient. MTT are much different from cash games and even the best mtt regs PROBABLY only cash 20% of the time, so if your not winning right now like you think you should, variance will play out and you should start seeing positive results. There is a lot to be learned when it comes to mtt grinding, so maybe read a few books, watch videos, and make sure you check out the CardsChat forums everyday! Best of luck on the felts!

I dont know how experienced you are but i recommend checking out Harrington's books, the Kill series (Phil,Everyone) and go to Pokerschool and watch live trainings, session videos from team online.

Not sure if you can managed it, but you can try, maybe more down the road, hiring a coach to do some coaching sessions

Good luck

Hello! Thanks for the tips! About my experience, lets say I played a lot, but I never really learned poker the way most good players do, I didnt learn the vocabulary for example, I played mostly on instinct, not really reviewing what I did wrong and thats what I want to change the most, I want to be good at it, not just lucky, or "talented", I want to earn my victories.
About Harrington's, most of his books are on live poker right? I read briefly few pages from one of his books and I felt like it didnt match the low level of french low limits MTTs, to be honest thats the difficult part for me, finding MTTs articles or books that will consider the fact that you play big tournaments (2500+ players) with 60% fishs (I'm not exagerating, 5 and 10 euros tournaments in france are amazingly fishy, and I'm not talking the Tight Fish type or whatever, I'm talking 60+% VPIP all in early preflop with QKo "because its my favorite hand" kind of guy, sadly, when your bankroll is low and you're French, these are really important tournaments)

About coaching, I'm not even close to considering it money-wise sadly, the thing about me is, I couldnt never boost my bankroll, I always had to use my winnings immediatly to live, pay rent, or pay debts, I never had over 300 bankroll, and its a pretty stressful way to play poker, that is why, starting fresh, I need to make sure my knowledge, and play are spot-on.
I dont want to look for excuses and mention the word "bad beat", I want to be as solid as I could potentially be for the next 2 months I'll be playing ^^

I'll try Harrington, for now I'm trying to make my basics really solid, reviewing ABC stuff because I've never done it "officially", and in my opinion, except for extremely naturally talented players (like my best friend is by the way, my connection to poker is also due to him, he's over 70 000 euros in winnings, same limits, 5 10 20, yes he had to win a lot of them , most recently he ended First on 10 000 at 10 euros entry, more than 15 000 in cash and 4000 in tickets, it kinda made me think "**** I want that too", because I was there when he won and yelled like 8 a year old girl when he won the heads up ) , the best way is to learn this as a science, as you would take a math class, and thats what I will try to do ^^

Have you considered playing SNG's or cash games rather than MTT's? MTT's are attractive because of the glory and potential of turning $5 into $10,000, but the variance is high. It's harder to make a steady profit playing MTT's compared to cash or SNG games. You could win a big tourney but then go on a 30 buy in drought. The problem is compounded when you have really big fish playing at the lower levels, who make the variance even higher.

Especially with a low bankroll, SNG and cash games are a much better grinding option IMO.

Hi r3d, yeah I forgot to talk about that, about Cash games & SNGs, Cash Game is an absolute mystery to me, I've never quite understood the difference and I always felt like my MTTs skills were misleading me and making do absolute bullshit in cash games, I've rarely tried, and I'm kind of afraid to do so.
About SNGs, I started there actually, and I feel like SNGs structures tend to be more "luck based", and I just had a bad feeling playing those, oh and I still have to remind that, french poker rooms are limited in players, so SNG choice for us is extremely limited, we have mostly 30 players 5, 10 euros, but I just dont feel like its something viable, I might be wrong, but I'd rather stick to what I know for now as I dont have the bankroll to try many things ^^, so TLDR Cash games I feel like a whale there, not having a clue about how to value correctly and my VPIP, SNGS feel random & luck based to me

There are many folks who have made up their minds that they are either cash ring or tourney folks. Being good at one does not mean you can be good at the other. There are not as many folks who are certified good at both.

So don't let that bug you in any way.

Garaam said:

About coaching, I'm not even close to considering it money-wise

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Personal coaching isn't the only way to improve. Training sites, while arguably not as good, offer a lower-cost alternative, about $30 a month. Depending on your willingness to learn and how appropriate the one you pick is for your needs, they are pretty low risk / cost effective; it doesn't take much improvement to win $30 more per month.

you must read some books and see some tutorial videos at first.you can find on youtube many videos