1000th post: MTT success - it's not all in the game

[cking]

very nice post, bankroll management is my number 1 pirority at the moment, and so far i think ive done a very nice job of building it through sngs. It sucks wanting to play the bigger games, but im committed to making this not just a hobby but a profitable one.

so congrats on the success and 1k post, i have a long long way to go

[BT2]

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Staying in shape – in the so-called cybersports (CounterStrike, Starcraft and the like), the best players stay in shape to get an extra edge. Yet, this is barely mentioned in any poker magazines, books and so forth. Sure, as a poker player you don’t need the reaction times, extreme hand-eye coordination, but one thing you do need is stamina. The ability to focus is essential for getting good reads, especially late in an MTT. Making complex decisions, going through a bunch of factors if you’re out of shape and on your 10th straight hour of poker – it’s hard. Give yourself the extra edge. Playing big online MTTs can take 10+ hours; I don’t even want to get into the WSOP and other huge, multi-day live events. Obviously, staying in shape has a bunch of other upsides as well, but I won't get into that here.


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I'm a fatty

[rothko]

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NH

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PS. Keep the avatar, its one of my favorites.

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[furyshade]

hmm, the one thing i see there that i definitely don't do is field size selection, i have primarily always played stars, small buyin rebuys usually, so huge fields, how would you recommend playing with better field management than playing 1-3k fields, it seems like sites that get less people have really crappy prize pools compared to buy-in, or should i just not worry about that?

[mlagoo]

well yeah the prizepools obviously are going to be worse, but if youre constantly playing in tournaments where you have to beat 1500 people to get a decent payout, you could easily go busto before you hit a big score (which is why so many MTT players mix in SNGs). so one way to "diversify" is to add in small-field (and necessarily smaller prize pool) MTTs.

[DonkFu]

Awesome post man, esp. the bit about staying in shape. I've gotten awesome results from adding exercise to my poker routine.


On this:
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• Drop the trash talking. I’m a really, really competitive person. I just hate losing. So if I get a bad beat, I’m pretty likely to bitch at the villain, no matter if he played bad or not (although way more likely if he donked it up). It’s just disgraceful, and in stark contrast to the friendly tone I keep prior to going out (and in real life). It just needs to stop; it’s shameful and classless. This is actually my number one goal.


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Type it, cut / paste it into a text file. It'll look really stupid in a few minutes. Do that enough times and all you can say is nh, gg. This probably sounds a little dumb but I did it and I no longer talk smack (unless it's freindly). I also have a collection of really stupid things I'm thankful I said to nobody. That can be interesting.

Anyway, good post, good job and good luck!

[furyshade]

what site is good for this, FTP seems kinda bad for it since it has recently gotten a huge rush of players, which is why i moved there since i always assumed bigger pool was better results because the people play so poorly that the bigger field wouldn't matter, i have had a big cash in a large field, at least for my roll, but my roll has dwindled, do you think a site like UB would work better, i've looked at some UB completed results, noticing things like their 30r having same guarantee as the stars 3r, and $25 tournaments with 4k guarantee, seems like it would be pretty bad unless the variance is so greatly decreased that wins are pretty common for a reasonable to good player, any thoughts on this from experience?

[mlagoo]

i mean, i guess im just unsure what your hangup is about small prizepools. the prizepool being smaller doesnt mean there is less value in playing the tourney. there are less people playing, it takes less time, etc. would you play a $1 tournament with 20,000 people just because of the sweet prizepool?

as far as good sites, i dont really know because i dont really do this. i play cash games for my lower variance income. but for people that play MTTs exclusively this is a necessity IMO. but there are a ton of small sites out there... bodog, you mentioned UB, and some other really small sites like doyles room, crypto, stuff like that.

[furyshade]

alright, well my hangup is that i've had a kind of long dry streak on the bigger mtt's, so i was wondering if, since you had a smaller pool, you need to win more often to have a decent ROI, since obviously winning a $6k first prize in a 3r will cover the past buy-ins better than a $600 first in a 3r, that is my only concern, not sure if it came across as i wanted it to, so sorry if i am not communicating this well

[Soulman]

furyshade,

your ROI will NOT go down in the long run by playing smaller fields, but your variance will. A concrete example: all of the 5k I built up in the last 3 months or so have come from fields with less than 400 players. I've probably FT'ed 10 or more MTTs.

That's the difference: with smaller fields, you'll FT way more often, which will make up for the one big score in huge fields.

Regarding sites: I only play Euro-only sites besides Stars and FTP, can't give much advice there. Bodog is good, like mlagoo says. Look around through e.g. bonuswhores.

DonkFu, that's some nice advice to deal with smack talk - I'll definitely do that, as I always cool off after a minute or two.