Carl "The Dean" Sampson.  

I have been playing MTT’s on my sponsor’s site recently which is Cake Poker. I am not a tournament poker specialist as many people are aware and I am seriously having to find my feet at this form of poker. Last night (Sunday 30^th July) was the main event of the month, the flagship $250,000 guaranteed tournament.

 

The total prize money was a whopping $360,000 and with 150 players getting paid and the number of satellite entries being quite high then the opportunities to get chips and go deep were more than evident. The starting stack was a nice 10k with blinds at 25-50 and 15 minute starting levels.

 

But I have not made a very auspicious start to the first few tournaments despite coming very close to the money a few weeks ago. My main problem is that I cannot make my mind up what is the best way to go with regards how to play the event. I know that there is plenty of dead money around during the early levels and last night I was trying my very best to get it.

 

It isn’t the size of the starting field that is the problem as the bigger the field, the more players get knocked out and the field size still shrinks proportionately. The blinds increase quickly as they do with all online MTT’s and your M reduces rapidly towards the end of the first hour and into the second hour. This leaves the average stack relatively short quite quickly and you always feel pressured into making a move.

 

It has been a very interesting process to be honest and it is nice to be learning an entirely new form of poker again. I can see serious arguments for both styles of play, waiting and then becoming aggressive and getting busy straight away if the table and the situation warrants it. I seriously think that I need to pick one strategy and go with it.

 

I have also read a few books on the topic including the excellent book by Arnold Snyder but yet I still feel that something is missing from my game. The answer to that is that it is probably experience. At the end of the day, I know that I am +EV in these events or at least I should be. But I have been having some serious thoughts about these tournaments (also play the 100k event every other Sunday evening) and playing them like a super expanded SNG may be the way to go.

 

I have considerable experience playing this form of poker having played several thousand tournaments up to and including the $200+$15 levels. There are distinct similarities between SNG’s and MTT’s as there are all forms of poker of course.

 

I have been seriously contemplating recently playing tournament poker in greater quantity just for the sake of doing something different. I have been enjoying the tournaments but haven’t been enjoying the results but hopefully that will all change soon.

 

I will keep the readers of All Aussie Poker up to date with my tournament results over the coming months and the strategies that I will finally settle on that will hopefully get the job done. But let’s face it, my results can hardly be any worse than they have been so far.

 

 

Carl “The Dean” Sampson is sponsored by Cake Poker and can be seen at pokersharkpool