observation

I spent a good portion of my Saturday afternoon doing what some would probably consider to be very, very boring: I observed a successful online tournament player. I watched him just miss cashing in a couple tourny's, and watched him cash in a couple.

What did I learn:
a. he's got almost impeccable timing: his steal & resteal attempts worked very, very often
b. his bet sizes were often not full pot-sized bets, but seemed to be right-on, getting called when he wanted calls & folds when he (probably) wanted folds.
c. trapping is a very, very big part of online tournament play, his and many others who were building big stacks.

Re-stealing has not been part of my game for a while; and my steal attempts have been WAY too few. Watching this dude today I knew that he was either catching a mad amount of cards (unlikely), or he was effectively exploiting superior position against timid opponents.

I tried some of these in the $28K tonight on tilt, and did OK. Man, it sure feels terrifying when you're shoving on the turn with just a draw, but that's OK. It's necessary, I think: that's how you're gonna build a chip stack that stands to win. One hand that stands out was when I played one of my new favorite types of hands: suited gapper (8 6 spades this time). The flop came 7 9 K, two spades, I checked, the guy bet, I shoved, he called with K-junk (no spade); turn brought my straight. Another hand, I was on the button and called a raise with something moderately OK (J10 or something not great, but connected) with the intention of stealing with a flop bet if rags came out. Flop was 7 7 x (2 clubs); dude bets 1/3 pot... I pussy-out a bit and min-raise, INSTAfold.

I was at around 3200 after about 40 minutes, when I got blinded out a little, and then suffered a beat somewhere (don't remember honestly) that brought me down to 1400; I picked up some small pots, lost some, was around 1600 when I pick up JJ UTG. I unfortunately shoved that into a well-disguised KK and busted. All-in-all, though, I was very happy with the way I played, and became more confident in facets of my game that have been lacking.

Also just read an article about one of the final 6 at today's $500K at tilt (editorial update: she actually won the thing last night!), where she says,

“I realized that in order to move up and be able to beat the big guys playing the higher buy-in tourneys, I had to change my game. So I started experimenting with raising marginal hands that I usually wouldn't play and decided to improve my post flop play even if that meant looking like a donk for a while.

After making many funny moves and a lot of mistakes, I finally got the hang of it and I think that's when I really started winning a lot.”

I think (hope?) that's the point I'm at right now: moving away from ABC poker, testing the waters with playing more marginal hands, probably looking like an idiot at times when caught shoving with air (or close to), but all-in-all: improving, adding more weapons to my arsenal.