MTT January mistakes: Post your 3 biggest ones.

[sirio11]

Post the mistakes you made in January and that hurt your game the most.

Feel free to add ideas about how to improve for next month.


Mine:

1) Not paying attention to my opponents while playing.

2) Not taking the time to study and review important decisions I made in tournaments.

3) Not finding the right schedule to play my tournaments, this is, playing too many at once (for me, too many is more than 3); or playing too many during one day (for me, this is more than 10 in a given day)


Probable solutions:

1) I have had this problem for so long, I don't know what to do, I have an attention problem, my mind can't just be in just one place, maybe some medication will help, but don't know really an easy way to solve this problem.

2) This is an easy one, JUST DO IT.

3) Now that I'm playing full time, I have yet to find my rithm; looks like I play the best when I'm playing at most 2 tourneys at the same time; and probably for me it's not a good idea to play more than 6 in the day. What's the use to play 12 tourneys with a 40% ROI if you can play 5 with a 100% ROI?

[Ansky]

Similar to your post about how you lost the 700k, I also had a meltdown about the same time in the tournament. That has led to #1:

1) Recognize better the table dynamics, and the reads players will have on you. A standard blind steal situation is no longer standard if the blinds think you are a total wacko.

2) It's ok to fold your big blind. It's ok. Sorta deep in the stars 150 chief911 raised my bb from the button and I obviously shoved J8o. I had no real read, just that I always assume the button raiser never has a hand. It may indeed have been a good spot, but if it was it was for the wrong reasons.

3) I need to stop talking on AIM, looking at 2+2, and talking to my roomates while 4 tabling 100+ dollar MTTs. Really.

[MLG]

1. Not examining Amnon Phillipi before pushing the turn. Who knows if i would have picked something up, but I might have.

2. Folding an overpair on day 1 in an 80k pot when it was the best hand. The mistake stemmed from not leading the turn.

3. In general I pay off the river too much when i am clearly behind.

[odellthurman]

Mistakes:

1. I never play more than 3 at once, but I have a tendency, when I get a big stack or get deep in one tourney, to get too flippant about my other 1 or 2 tourneys. I don't think the solution is to play one at a time. Instead, I just need to buckle down in all of my tourneys.

2. I get too loose when my stack size reaches 10 BBs. Although I may, at times, need to go into push or fold mode, I need to stop just pushing the first ace I get and pay more attention to the other players at the table, position with regard to money, escalation of payouts, etc.

3. I should not start any tourney that I am not willing to grind out to the finish. A good example is the 8:15 $3 rebuy on Stars. Around midnight, I tend to get very impatient b/c of the reality that you just don't make much money unless you get to the final table.

[locutus2002]

This is an interesting post.

My biggest mistake is not valuing chip and a chair, in negative EV situations (pot odds suck). This has affected my game dramatically and has cost me substantially this month.

My second biggest problem is being too conservative with my bankroll. I limit my upside by playing many satellites that have a low variance return. While I am a consistent winner, I do not put enough money into play to really win substantially. My favorite move is "unregister".

My third biggest problem is organization. I have a ton of information available, and I do not organize it properly for:
Tournament selection
Hand selection
review of mistakes

I can't tell you what I've played in a month. Only that my accounts are up X $.

[SheepCookers]

funny I actually saw that hand in the 150+12 on stars. It wasn't that bad of a push. Resteals are always nice except when you get caught.

[A_PLUS]

1.) Refusing to trust my instincts, reads, etc. and paying off on a hand when I am sure I am behind, b/c I make up a range he 'could' have.

2.) Playing the value of my cards too much when playing live. I need to start seeing identifying overly tight post flop players and get into pots with them, regardless of my hand more often, especially with deeper stacks.

Losing my nerve after the flop. I need to fire that 2nd bullet way more often.

[Ansky]

[ QUOTE ]
funny I actually saw that hand in the 150+12 on stars. It wasn't that bad of a push. Resteals are always nice except when you get caught.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah I know, like I said it may indeed have been a good spot. The point is I pushed just because I never beleive a solid player has a hand on the button, not because of any table factors at my disposal. So yeah, if I did pick a good spot, it was sort of by accident.

[KneeCo]

1) Calling rather than rasing or folding pf on my Aussie Millions bustout hand ("I can't fold the best hand I've seen all day, but I can't reraise an UTG raiser w/ AJ. Let me just call, what's the worst that can happen?? After all, I have POSITION!"). Making a push on the flop that no better hand would call b/c I felt sure that the UTG player didn't have an A, while not really considering the third player in the hand.

2) Playing too much. Although it didn't hurt my game really, I didn't have much to do last week and never got called in for work, and that led to putting in a ton of hours at the virtual tables, which can't be too healthy.

3) Not playing any limit hold'em cash games. They are profitable, helpful to my overall game and how I built my roll to begin with, I gave them up almost entirely in the last couple of months of '05 and told myself I would go back to them in the new year, but I still haven't gotten on that.

[Matt24]

1) reraising a tight player with about 30% of the field left in the $2k event at Tunica with AJ. He raised from the cutoff so for some reason I'm thinking he is weak. I really didn't take enough time to think about the situation. He was a middle aged man who probably didnt change his opening standards from utg to the cutoff. I'm an idiot. I put him all in, he thinks for like 5 minutes and calls with AQ. That puts me a bit under avg and I can't recover.

Live vs online is just so different. I am a total LAG live, at least I was in Tunica, I was raising J6s utg and all kinds of crap. How weak/tight the players are baffle me.

solution: take my time. THINK! I do everything super fast. I eat unreal fast, I'm the fastest golfer anyone has ever seen(10 handicap btw), and I like to play live poker fast too.

I made other mistakes sure, but nothing to write about. well actually

2)Got upset about 2 horrid beats late in the Stars $109r. I went out drinking, came back played 30/60, lost $3200 which led to my worst day EVER.

solutionon't play after I go out drinking after steaming, at least twice as high as I typically play.