Running painfully, painfully bad

[mackthefork]

[ QUOTE ]
Maybe I should move back to play money too, because I raise a lot with AJ.

[/ QUOTE ]

Amen

Edit: Maybe the detractor should move to play money until he realises being weak tight isn't a good idea.

Mack

Raising with any of these hands in position is perfectly fine, calling preflop raises with AJ/KQ is a huge leak, of course its always situational, but generally at early-middle stages of tournament you do not want to be calling raises with those hands, I like to play AQ a little differently/more aggressive (possible re-raises, when you call you don't learn anything, figure out where you stand, DON'T fall in love with the hand, but force people willing to call with KQ/AJ into making mistakes [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]), but you have to know when you are beat and when to let it go obviously. Patience is something I acquired after realizing that I -DON'T- have to try to make things happen. Let the cards play themselves. Some tournaments you will steadily build a stack throughout and maintain it, some tournaments you will do nothing for 2 hours and then win a series of coinflips. You just have to -KNOW- that you never want to be forcing things to happen, you can be well below average and become chip leader within minutes, trying to force things to happen ends up giving you less of a chance to actually make them happen. Also, never giving up on the tournament, especially after taking a bad beat for a good portion of your stack, can put you in good positions. To give examples of both, I've had tournaments where I've come back from 45 and 85 chips to be close to chip leader, and tournaments where I hadn't done anything for hours besides getting my 1500 stack to about 2200, only to be looking at a stack of 25000 minutes later, or sitting there with my starting chip stack and only having 10x BB, and then winning my next 3 coin flips to take me to the final table. Not saying I ended up doing as well as I wanted to in most of those, but I put myself in the best possible position for it by staying patient.

[mrh86]

There is a time to play many marginal hands, but you just have to recognize the situation. Raising with K-J or K-Q isn't a bad idea in some instances, but you have to be patient when considering playing pots with these types of hands.

[KramerTM]

[ QUOTE ]
Well, I think that I have truly figured out my biggest leak, which also leads to most of the other ones. My biggest problem is simply a lack of patience. I have a tendency to lose patience, and try to make things happen with hands that I shouldn't, in places where I shouldn't. Do any of you have any good tips for maintaining patience when the hands just aren't coming?

[/ QUOTE ]

You just summed up, verbatim, my MTT leak that I am trying to plug. We should chat.

[davidross]

I don't know anything about your play, but I do know that you can go long periods without any results at all, especially if you are trying to win and not just get into the money.

After winning a big tournament in July, I went 24 tournaments without earning a single dollar. It started with some bad luck, and quickly turned to some bad play, things like calling all-ins early with AA even though you know you're beat.

But everytime I think I can't possibly get more unlucky, another 1 outer hits on the river. The only advice I can give you is to focus on the things you can control.Make good decisions. TO keep myself from acting too quickly without thinking, I'm keeping poker chips in my mouse hand now and practice shuffling or chip tricks while I'm waiting. THe biggest advantage for me is that I have to let go of the chips and grab the mouse before acting, and that gives me a little more time to think about raising my QJs from EP.