Winning online player struggling in live tourney

[Nairb]

I play mainly online and am a winning player, cashing in 78% of my last 2500 tourneys, mainly 3 to 5 table SNG, with over a 40% first place finishes. After playing live in a couple of freerolls and winning the end of year event I was invited to join a well known medium stakes monthly tournament series. Buy in is $100 and usually there are 24-36 players with all money going to top 5 finishers, a very topheavy award structure. Players start with 100000 in chips and blinds start at 250-500 and double every 45 minutes until the fourth level, then every thirty minutes.

With the online success I thought I would pwn these part time players and have not had any success at all. Final tabled a couple of times but after 8 attempts not once in the money.

Has anyone here had a similar experience? If so what ajustments would you make to your game with this structure? I play it the same as I would online, very tight early and picking up the pace around the fourth or fifth level loosening up and stealing blinds etc... The problem I think is these players are very tight and differ greatly from the online players I play regularely and I have a really tough time getting max value out of my big hands and spew too much late with marginal hands.

How would you adjust?

[rrrorrim]

I'm kind of like you but with STTs... and 6 months behind. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

I'm baffled by why I can win SnGs, why I can fairly often "know" what someone has online... but in person I am clueless. Can it be something as simple as us feeling like we're not in our element? And our game is getting screwed up in subtle ways?

Of course, the solution is to play many more live games...

[rrrorrim]

In the tight live game... you know the answer, which is to play looser. At the very least, you get to steal some blinds. But more important is that you will be the catalyst to loosen the table up. You will coax the table into the direction you want it to go...

(I have always had this idea that the table can be controlled by a masterful player, like a puppeteer with strings connected to every player)

[Nairb]

Another thought is that after only 8 tourneys it is a quite small sample size. Even with my online win rate it is nothing to go 8 or 10 tourneys out of the money. I think it just may seem more apparent live because of the time investment.

I do need to loosen up my play with the tight players everywhere, especially in position early with good but not necessarily premium hands.

[FourthWin]

Although my online success is not anywhere near yours, I have been playing live tourneys for the last 8 months.

I've had pretty good success with the live tourneys, from 2 to 4 a month. I'm in a league, much like you describe but with $65-$85 buy ins. The others are either charity events or casino games. I have very different strategies in each; first, the casinos and the charity games do not give you 10,000 chips, so that changes things. The other big difference is that you'll see a lot of the same faces in the league type event, so you can "learn" more about them each time you play.

First thing's first: The payout structure is so tight for a reason. As you know, these things can last =~ 9 hours. It's got to be worth it to play this long. No one wants to play for 6+ hours for 1.5x buy in.

The league requires a real dedication to playing the players. Most of the folks in mine have been playing regularly together for at least a year. In that time, they've learned a lot about each other.

Where that left me was with folks who would play ridiculously with each other, but I couldn't get any action.

In any case, the key to my success has been to 1) make sense of what the guy to my right and the two guys to my left are doing (or girls). You'll be playing a lot of pots with these three, so figure them out as fast as you can.

The other key, that has really been paying dividends, is to carry my knowledge of these three over to the next games. At first, it's difficult, because there's so many faces. After a game, right down as much as you can remember about their betting patterns, their table presence, and any other pertinent info.

With these groups, it's important to identify who you have an edge against, and in what situation. If you don't know anything about the folks at the table, and they know quite a bit about each other, who is the sucker?

The other dividend has been identifying a couple of loose players and making it personal with them. I've busted one guy out the last 3 of 4 tourneys after folding or tanking a couple of small pots to him early. Tighten up, wait for a hand, and rope him in. Helps that he plays 50%+ hands, but he really likes hands with me, because I do pay him off early.

In any case, most of these guys do not play any serious amount of online poker. The standard 4xbb+1bb(limper) shuts action down in my game, for instance. There is a substantial amount more post-flop play, even with 10-25bbs. The bluffs are bolder, and table talk is really, really powerful.

The upside is that these guys are much more comfortable, and are playing "their" game. Having played together regularly, there's a whole bunch of conventions going on, and they're not aware of them all the time. Your job, as a new player in the group, is to tune into as many of these as possible before you start doing them without realizing it.

Stick with it. I can tell you that even though my online roll is much larger (or, to be honest, has been), money won in these games is much more dear. Good luck.

[pzhon]

[ QUOTE ]
I play mainly online and am a winning player, cashing in 78% of my last 2500 tourneys, mainly 3 to 5 table SNG, with over a 40% first place finishes.

[/ QUOTE ]
Sorry, but this is not close to believable. No one sustains a win rate that high at any level.

[Doc T River]

Based on your numbers, I think you are waiting too long to get started. Your stack is 200BB at level one, but by the fourth level that same amount of chips is only 25BB and if you wait until the fifth level to really start doing something, your chip stack is only 12.5BB.

Also, I agree that you have not played enough to get a feel for these players. Figuring out how much to bet to maximize your hand is one of the hardest subjects to master, in my opinion.

[Nairb]

Thak you to those that provided quality advice as I split the win 3 ways and took down the side pot for $610 over my buy in. Had to loosen up.

Oh, anyone who thinks it is impossible to finish in the top 7 out of 45 in a Stars 3.25 or 6.50 45 man SNG close to 8 out of 10 times is just mistaken, or a cash game player that does not understand low buy-in SNG play and the dynamics of such. I posted this to get help with my live play, not to brag about online results. I was simply showing the disparity between the two. Call me a nit or whatever you want but it is fairly easy to pick your spots in these and cash a high percentage of the time. It is how I built my roll and now play almost all 25 and 50 NL, which is much more profitable than SNGs.

[SamC489]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I play mainly online and am a winning player, cashing in 78% of my last 2500 tourneys, mainly 3 to 5 table SNG, with over a 40% first place finishes.

[/ QUOTE ]
Sorry, but this is not close to believable. No one sustains a win rate that high at any level.

[/ QUOTE ]

I concur. provide a sn or sharkscope graph.

[Nairb]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I play mainly online and am a winning player, cashing in 78% of my last 2500 tourneys, mainly 3 to 5 table SNG, with over a 40% first place finishes.

[/ QUOTE ]
Sorry, but this is not close to believable. No one sustains a win rate that high at any level.

[/ QUOTE ]

I concur. provide a sn or sharkscope graph.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ok I am going to do something different than I usually see on this forum, come clean if any of you care. The truth is I do not know what my true SNG stats are and was only trying to draw the disparity I have experienced in live vs online play and, as a previous poster said, pulled the stats out of my arse. I only got PT about 2 months ago when I made the move to 25nl and have no idea of my true record in these tourneys. All I know is it seems like I cash close to what I said and ground $50 into a balance over $800 in 4 months playing nothing but 3 and 5 table SNG after work and on my day off, maybe 12 hours a week or just a tad more on Stars and could not understand why my live tourney play was not as profitable.

I value the advice I get and enjoy the discussions on this forum and hope this one time of "imbellishing" the truth will not make anyone form an ill opinion of me as all I want to do is get better. It was a ridiculous thing to claim and even more ridiculous to try to justify it and for that I am sorry.

Brian