MTT January mistakes: Post your 3 biggest ones.

[gumpzilla]

[ QUOTE ]
What's the use to play 12 tourneys with a 40% ROI if you can play 5 with a 100% ROI?

[/ QUOTE ]

If they all had the same buyin (a bad assumption, I know), I'm reasonably sure that the variance would be lower. If this isn't that big a deal to you, and you save some time that you're happy to use in other ways, then I agree that it's probably a good adjustment.

[nath]

I fond I was playing too passively in January. I was attempting to correct some of my super-LAGginess and as a result wasn't gambling enough.
As a result I was having a Hellmuthian experience: I was frequently getting all in with the best hand and getting outdrawn. It took me a while to remember that winning tournaments often involves getting in with the worst hand.

This left me often frustrated and not in my best mindset for playing poker.

I also found I became remarkably loose-passive with a deep stack. When I have 15-20k in the 2nd hour of an 11r and the blinds are 75-150, the small pots don't seem to mean as much, and I would limp more speculative hands and just give up if I didn't hit big. Just cranking up the aggression a little on those hands built bigger pots when I hit and allowed me to pick them up more when I didn't.

And the aggression is back: PT has my stats from today's 25k at 34/24. Even discounting the rebuy hour that's pretty damn LAGgy.

[zoobird]

Great idea for a thread.

Suggestion for the 'not paying attention' one...at least for those who are playing online. FORCE yourself to take notes on what opponents do on hands. Even if most of it is useless stuff like 'open raised 4bb with AJs utg+2'. If you're doing this it will make you pay enough attention to notice some of the interesting/useful stuff too.

My top 3:
1. Winning money on games I enjoy and am relatively good at (micro buy-in MTTs) and then losing it at games I don't enjoy and am bad at (turbo STTs, ring games).
2. Playing (and playing badly) when I'm not really in the mood.
3. Not trying to put opponents on a specific range. This is partly a function of the random hands a lot of people play in $1 MTTs, but once I know someone is either tight or a thinking player, there's no excuse for not going to the 'trouble' of thinking about their specific range on a hand.

[bmxreed36]

Just looking through everyone else's responses has helped me identity a couple things that I might not even have been aware of myself. Good idea for a thread. I guess for January, 3 ongoing mistakes I made which I'll have to change are:

1) Starting up too many tournies when I'm really not geared to go all out. When I get a couple bad beats and lose the ones I'm currently playing, I'll too often fire up some more only to find out after a few minutes that I really don't want to be playing in a bad mood for a few hours and I just donk my chips away.

2: At some point, I feel like there's just some pot that I have to win or some hand that I have to pull a fancy move with--always my last hand. Patience! Play solid poker!

3: Spending too much on satellites. I like to play the occassional satellite into a Sunday tournament or two but this month I got carried away, forcing myself to get a seat every week even if it ended up costing more than the seat is worth. From now on, I'll have to just play one once in awhile and not force anything.

[hencole]

1. Playing for playing sake
2. Watching a film at the same time. Failing to follow what is going on in the poker game and failing to follow what is going on in the film too.
3. Finding it hard to motivate myself due to a big win when playing for smaller prize

Solutions

1. Don't play unless I feel I want to rather than to just kill time.
2. Listen to the radio instead. I get my best results then as I can watch and listen and don't get bored.
3. Be more realistic about my expectations.

[BPA234]

1. Not organizing my play into a cohesive strategy.
2. Not adjusting to stack sizes.
3. Playing too aggro, playing too weak (usually against the same player).

[Stoneii]

1. Realise that a long constructed table image is
meaningless to a player just moved to your table.
2. Playing the maniac at FT's
3. Playing too passively at bubble time.

1. I've done this on several occasions at live games especially, know I have a certain image at the table and make my move accordingly, paying little heed to the latest arrival with a calling stack. Solution, PAY ATTENTION.

2. I sometimes forget that a whole new image has to be created at FT's cos at least 1/2 the players weren't at my table for the last x hours if at all. I just think everyone automatically wants to climb a place at a time and I have gone nuts before. Only works if FT made up of this mindset.
Solution - PAY ATTENTION.

3. I love playing so much I hate it when I get knocked out, not just the obvious reason that I don't money or don't lift as much as the next guy out but because, generally in live games, I have to stop playing - hateful [img]/images/graemlins/mad.gif[/img]

[Yuv]

-Blowing most of my pokerstars br in limit holdem which I've never played prior to this month.
-Blowing the rest in the 200$ turbo sng's.
-Not playing enough MTT's, where I'm still a reasonable winner.

I made a decent comeback after going "broke" for the first time in my "career" (both are pretty relevant terms, i'm still an overall winner). I made up about half of what I lost this month, but i'm still heavily down. School is a real problem, since I don't have the time to play MTT's. Hopefully the next couple of weeks I'll have more free time and focus on my tournament play.

[nincomepoop]

Miscues:
----------------------------------------------------------
1. Playing my LAG cash game in the early stages of the tournament . . . not adjusting for tournament play.

2. Over-analyzing every mistake, action, and anything poker related . . . burning my self out thinking poker 24/7

3. Not paying keen attention to opponents, and getting distracted by outside sources. IE: browsing the forum.

-------------------------------------------------------
Remedy:

1. Play more straightforward early on, levels 1-3, an ABC approach until I have a lock on my opponents.

2. Understand that luck has a fundamental outcome of many situations, and if you're a winning player, you're not always playing poor poker.

3. Realize I have to devote 3+ hours to a tournament, and that I can surf for porn, 2+2, and what have you any other time of the day. Nothin is more important than poker is, when you're playing poker.

----Read and re-read Heaven's guide on notes, and apply them. At least pay close attention.

[registrar]

1. Not betting enough for value/undervaluing tptk in early stages. It's easy to forget that the reason you have a chance to beat a large field is because many in that field will limp in or raise with KQ, then call a reraise, then call your AQ all the way down. Ditto, ace rag. By the turn, you're thinking 'he's gotta have two pair' and ease off the betting when the extra chips I could have won there would be very helpful later.

2. Conversely, putting players on a hand that you assume you can knock them off. For example, weak loose UTG limps, you raise 4x from button with 88. An ace flops. Donk makes a weak raise, you reraise, he calls. Conclusion: he's got an ace, he doesn't like his kicker. Chip-saving conclusion: it doesn't matter how much you have repped a stronegr ace pre-flop, post-flop, turn and river, he's not going to let that A2o go and you're going to look pretty silly turning over 88. (This was my worst hand in Janaury).

3. Not committing to each tournie I play. When I switched from mainly cash to mainly MTTs six months ago, my initial results were great, four first places and a second in my first 10 MTTs. This was partly a rush, partly luck, partly intuition and part solid ring game poker. But, I think, the main thing was the respect I gave the games. I assumed that to beat 300 other players, I needed to be fully focussed at all times for the whole thing. Then I read HoH my play became a lot more sloppy as I thought more about M etc. and less about just winning each hand, or getting out when behind.

My solutions are:

1. Play cash again. It's doing my BR great good and I have missed it, after the many hours of hanging around, doing nothing, in MTTs. I'm hoping this will improve my general MTT game.

2. Play many fewer MTTs but for higher stakes. I think this makes the opponents easier to read and you feel better going out when outplayed and you've learned something rather than busting out because you've made reasonable assumptions about terrible players. Also, I'm pretty confident that I will play much better in a £50 buy-in and am likley to do a lot better in that thajn I will in five £10 buy-ins. It takes less time, is more exciting etc. etc.

I've also taken up drinking (in moderation) while playing again. Christ, you may as well enjoy it!