The MTT mind

[twang]

I have played roughly 60 MTTs. I've made it into the money a few times, but never made it really deep. Best place is 15/638. Small sample size, I know. What is painfully obvious though is that every single time I've made it far into the tournament I've had a great run of cards; big pairs, draws that hit and flopping monsters with junk from sb and bb.

I know some think going far into a tourney is a great confidence builder - I honestly think it's the opposite. Being on a rush for a couple of hours is fun, but it has very little to do with my abilities as a poker player. TBH, I find it really difficult to pat myself on the back just because the poker gods decided to give me big hands during a short period of time. If I've gone far in a MTT it's because I've been getting better cards than usual, period.

Now, the above stated probably says something about my game. I'm your average cash game grinder and I do really well. I'm used to the long run and I don't let bad beats get to me. To me, poker is all about thousands and thousands and thousands of hands. Which is pretty much the opposite of MTTs.

I read a Cardplayer article about Scott Fischman, who is an extremely successful tourneyplayer. He said that he had a highly competative nature and that he'd be a fish in a cashgame. While that is probably not exactly true (the fish part), it got me thinking. I am not very competative and poker to me is all about the long run.

It's an undisputable fact that there are quite a few poker players that makes it into good money all of the freaking time (compared to the rest of us). They get the same distribution of bad cards and good cards and everything in between, but they still make it somehow, and I think has something to do with having the opposite mindset of cash game player.

Of course, being a MTT-specialist is about the long run too (in the perspective of several tourneys), but when it comes down to a single tournament, my guess is that their mindset is way more short term. They go for the quick kill, so to speak. The next tournaments I play, I'll put on my madman hat and leave the patient, rational cash-game me outside the door.

Rant over.

There are alot of differences between tourney play, and cash game play. One of the major ones is you can't just play tight the whole way thru, because the rising blinds will eventually get to you if you don't either lag it up and get more chips, or steal pots with hands you wouldn't normally play.

Also, I hear some people saying that you should be more careful with slight +EV situations (and sometimes slight -EV situations) because if you bust, thats it, no more tourney, and I just don't play like that myself. I may be in the wrong in that aspect, but I think that taking a slightly +EV hand if it doubles you up far above the rest of the table is better than folding and losing a chunk of chips but still being alive. Maybe because I'd rather play with a big stack than a small stack is why I take those risks.

If you want to get better at tournament play, I highly reccomend you check out the anthology post stickied at the top of the forum, and don't just read the post, read the responses too. Alot of those posts opened up my eyes about things. I also reccomend buying the harrington books, they are like the HEPFAP for tournaments, that good.