hi,im beginer,some tips,thanks
I know this is a few weeks old but here it goes.
For me - in summary to be a winning tournament player you have to be dedicated, passionate, have a hard work ethic, be mentally strong (have faith), use good bankroll management, and most of all you have to use your head.
To become a winning tournament player there are certain tools you will need to do so - if you are not willing to invest in yourself with the costs of these tools than you simply do not take your
poker game seriously and there is no point in reading any further. There are tons of tools and training sites to help you out there - but there are 2 tools (in my opinion) that are vital to your growth and success as an MTT player.
1 - poker tracker 4 : this program will allow you to log hand histories for later review to help you identify and fix leaks in your game and track your progress as a player. The HUD function is just a bonus for me - I recommend not even using the HUD at first just so you don't get caught up in all the stats and instead you rely on your knowledge of the game to navigate spots and make decisions. I didn't use the HUD for 2 years and I think it was helpful for me to establish that mental foundation before I dove into using player stats to assist me with decisions. So again - this is the number one tool that will help you grow as a player.
2 - ICMizer : this program is a subscription based model that will tell you whether to call off or shove in certain situations via NASH based game ranges. Ranges are fully adjustable and once you learn to use this program and implement what it will teach you - it will make you money back within the first year of purchase. Trust me, players are missing tons of call offs and shoves playing way too tight and leaving tons of $$ on the table. I use the basic version as I don't see the added benefit in the "coaching" features of the program since I already pay for coaching.
So I would suggest you buy these programs - soak up all the content you can to formulated a good solid basic strategy, and when time comes - invest in a training site or personal coaching to move onto the next steps. This should be pretty far down the road, but eventually you will hit a wall and if you want to become really good at the mid stakes poker game, you will either need a coach or a solver like PIO since all the crushers at these levels are using these advanced tools.
Secondly elaborating on my basis of what you need - a hard work ethic. Poker is not easy and is forever changing - to gain an edge and keep that edge will require you to constantly work and study. I dedicate at LEAST 2 days a week, 3-4 hours per day to study poker. More than enough I study 3 and 4 days a week. Lots of good online grinders will study more than they play. It also helps to find and join a group of like minded players to study with via programs like Skype or Zoom. Having extra points of view whether right or wrong can make a big difference in how you think about and break down a hand.
Next on the list combines dedication and passion also touching on the mental game of poker. Again, poker is hard - and when it comes to tournament poker, you are going to lose waaaay more than you are going to win, so get used to that. Get used to bad variance and bad beats on the daily basis, these are part of the game and they are going to happen - don't focus on the outcome of a single hand - but rather whether or not you played the hand well and if the spot was profitable or not. Poker is all about the long term, its not about what happens when your AAs lose to 77s -- there is nothing to learn from bad beats. Shake them off and move on.
You need to have passion for this game in order to succeed at it -- that being said the reality of tournament poker is since you are going to lose most of the time due to normal variance you need to put in sufficient volume to help you combat those effects -- this means playing a MINIMUM of 100-125 games per month. It's just math. If you use proper bankroll management and allow yourself 100-150 buy ins for the stake you are playing - you will be fine. That kind of grind takes some serious dedication. I work a full time job 5 days a week, 40-50 hours every week and still play 125-150 games per month on average - so it can be done if you are willing to go the distance to accomplish your goal.
Lastly, just use your head. Play smart, play good strategies and solid poker and you will be fine. If you are tilting too much, shut the grind down, walk away and work on your mental game. Poker isn't isn't anywhere anytime soon. Most importantly, use good game selection - what does this mean? Well in a nutshell, tournaments with large fields are higher variance and much harder to win than tournaments with smaller fields. For example::
Every Sunday ACR runs a $6.60/$25k GTD tournament and it always has 3000 entries in the field...even for the best players this is a notoriously hard tournament to win because of the variance involved in such a massive field - so don't go blowing multiple buy ins chasing the dream. Your money would be better spent in a $6.60/$2K GTD with about 600 entries in the field and $600‐$800 up top.
Another example is the $2.75/$2500 GTD on ACR - first place is $350 and generally there's something like 1000 entries in the field - you could play the $3.30 / $1500 GTD and face 400 entries for a first place prize of about $325.
People always get drawn to the biggest prize pools with the smallest buy ins and while that's all well and good - the more entries in the field the harder the tournament is to win - the summary is find the smaller field tournaments in your buy in range that offer decent payouts and crush them. You will see a much better ROI using good game selection than you will chasing the dream of larger prize pools.
I hope this all makes sense and it's helpful. Thanks for reading.
