Played my first poker tournament last night

[Scars]

And I must admit it, it was pretty fun. I'm already looking towards entering another one. $30 buy in and about 4 tables of people, so probably like 40 people played. I got somewhere around 20th as when I was finally eliminated everyone was condensed to just 2 tables. I think I did pretty good, but a couple dumb moves.. but hey, it happens. I also learned a lot about live play etiquette. I like to think of myself as a card shark on PokerStars and Xbox (Texas Heat No Limit), but playing in a live game was a lot different. I think it made me a little nervous and I was kind of out of my element, but I got used to it pretty quick.

Overall, I had a really good time, and I feel like my next tournament I should play a lot better. I was probably like the youngest person in the tournament too, most of the people were old drunk guys. I feel like with a little more practice I can probably win their money. Top 5 gets a share of the jackpot.

Oh, and I got eliminated by a chick too. Went all in on an AJ, she had AK. We both flopped aces.. was waiting for another J on the turn, nope, river... nope. Then bam. I was done. Oh well. :rockon:

-Scars

 

[stephen_dedalus]

Poker is so much fun, I really like tournaments a lot also. They can take some time though depending on how many people enter and everything.

One way to help out your in person game is to set up some low stakes cash games with your buddies during the week. You can work on reading people better in a chill atomsphere and get more relaxed when playing in general and its fun too.

 

[Scars]

Yeah, it was really fun. I wish there were more players here so we could talk some strategy.

I think in that last tournament I played too many hands. I still folded a lot, but I think next time I'm going to play really tight and let most of the players knock each other out. Then only call/raise if I get AA, AK, or pairs etc.. and lower my range until I get to the final table or final two again. I made it to the second table last time, I only had like 900 chips, and I started with 5,000. I entered it being the weakest link.

On a second token.. I did notice a lot of people who were just simply stealing blinds and playing aggressive. So I'm kind of torn if I want to play that way, or save it for later. I watched a good tutorial by Daniel Negreanu about "small ball betting", essentially just stealing people's blinds. I tried out his strategy for fun under play money in PokerStars and worked well for me the first game. Went from 400 chips to 1,500+ in about 5 minutes. But then tried it some more later on a different table and people were calling me left and right. I guess it depends on the table and people.. Hmm.

Daniel Negreanu on Small Ball Betting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xeeozbb2_FQ

-Scars

 

[stephen_dedalus]

Yeah one thing I have found helped out my tournament game a lot is the influence of position on hands. How close you are to the dealer spot really influences how you play a hand.

It is a huge advantage to be in a hand with somebody playing in front of you, you have information about how well they think they are doing in the hand from their initial bet or lack of betting.

Also your position at the table should influence which hands you call or raise with. If you are sb or bb in a table, I will typically only preflop raise with AA, AK, or KK- maybe AQ. This is because you still have nearly the entire table behind you to play still, another factor which weighs into this is the strength of players at the table. Weaker hands will only get calls from me or slight raises, of course you have to be methodical and change your game up though so people dont get reads on you.

 

[OzyBoy]

Sounds good. I wouldn't mind do something like that.