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C: I think that moving up by making money by playing is good. If you don't start actually learning things at some point you're going to have massive trouble, as the game you brought to the 11s is going to be basically the same one you bring to the 50s. The thing is that your ROI is going to steadily drop as you move up stakes. Instead of dropping and staying positive, it'll often drop to zero or negative. I think that people undervalue looking over their hands and figuring out if or when they made mistakes. The games we are looking at are very finite. This means that they are good in a number of ways, but it also means that you can screw up all the work you put in to one game by making one stupid mistake. And people make stupid mistakes all the time, for a variety of reasons. Making the same mistake again and again because you never looked it over to figure out that it is a mistake is damn near inexcusable.

C: I try to keep a few things in mind whenever I’m playing, and they're basically the same things I’ve always tried to remember when I play sngs.

1) My opponents, with rare exceptions, are morons. They want to give their money away. They may not know it yet, but every time they enter a tournament they are actively trying to throw away money.

2) There is very little reason to do anything fancy in a sng. The stacks are short, the blinds are big. If you play your big hands against stupid people in straightforward fashion, you're going to get the money in the long run. If you similarly don't do incredibly dumb things in the late game, you'll be fine. If you fold when your opponent who plays obviously tells you that you are beat, you'll be ok in the long run.

3) At the low stakes, everyone underestimates just how much money you are making by waiting for morons to bust each other. The amount of money that you make passively by NOT getting involved is enormous.

4) There's almost no reason ever to play a sng with hard competition. There's just going to be another one coming up soon. A sng should just never have me, Newt, Curtains, and Gramps in it. They have, and it's mostly because we're lazy [censored]holes. Well, Curtains says he likes playing hard competition.” But, that's just short for being a lazy [censored]hole.

5) Which is basically (2) re-wrapped, patience is a huge virtue. Lots of people start pushing too soon, some wait until too late. Not getting frustrated with a cold run of cards is huge part of keeping yourself sane. Sometimes you're just going to get dealt 30 crappy hands in a row while you blind yourself down in the mid stages of a tournament. Learn to say "Oh Well." Also, be sure not to miss your any-two pushes.

The key is just not doing stupid stuff. Doing smart stuff should basically be reserved for when you have good reads.

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