This strategy report could also be called Anger Management for Online Vegas88 Players, but I thought the throwing the computer thing was pretty typical of a tilt session in the privacy of your home or office. Tilting is the result of inadequate anger management, and to help manage your anger in poker, here are some critical elements of your game that you need to master. If you can’t grasp the importance of bankroll management, situation analysis, and emotional detachment then you stand little chance of being successful at sit and go tournaments.
Are you frowning because you think that sit and go tournaments are not bringing the desired results you though they would? It’s precisely because you think you do not have a very good game, when in reality, you are actually pretty superbly optimized for the game.
Are you Ocean’s pitcher confused? Take these misunderstandings from winning players and install them into your poker mind and you will be a lot more successful as a result.
Bankroll Management
This is the ability to make sure that you have enough money to play aggressively when called upon to do so. While some hands will see you go to showdown with just a 200 or 300 chip stack, other hands you will be force to go all in with 30 or 40.
You are going to be in heads up situations with all your life bankroll on the line. If you think you are going to lose a lot of chips because of the circumstances, then you need to move down a level. Learn the math, use it to your advantage and you will never be able to make the correct maths decision when trying to bluff your opponent off hands.
Steps
It’s extremely important to properly evaluate your hand before putting it on the line. Hands like QQ, TT, 67, or even JJ become playable in early position, but not marginal playable. If you are going to be playing hands in late position, you can safely forget about holding KQ or AA in these situations. You want a hand that only has about a 10% chance of winning the pot, yet is still not completely dominated by the absolute worst hand out there (AA, AK, AK).
Considering the number of players in a sit and go tournament, you will almost certainly make your opponent mistakes. This doesn’t seem to matter much, but it’s actually big pots that hurt. When you are holding fifty big blinds and an ace is dealt at the flop, it is too easy to call raises, but not seeing one of them is a disaster. Raising 3x the blind is one of the few situations where you will still be ahead. Being slightly over aggressive in late position is still profitable.
What hands should you be playing from which position? This is a very important question. The first rule of thumb I have, is that from late position on you want to be extremely tight. You only want to be calling/limping in with hands that have the potential to win a big hand. Anytime you are playing from early position you will be in a bad spot. The problem with limping on a poor hand is that you give your opponents the opportunity to limp with a cheap hand and steal the pot from you. The best situation to be in is finding a cheap hand that doesn’t dominate.
So if you can’t easily control your table, and end up in a hand where you can’t really control the outcome, that’s when you’re going to suffer. finding a better hand shouldn’t be the goal. You are looking for hands with a high frequency of winning the showdown. Having a tight image is almost as important as having a strong hand. Don’t change it.