When I first started using
Tournament Indicator was also when I started getting the
MZone poker tournament strategy videos. I found that I was consistently "stuck" in the calling station (telephone). After watching the first 3 or 4 videos my game changed some and now I am "stuck" in the duck - my numbers rarely change. Presumably, an ultimate goal is that you want to be able to change that rating by playing different styles and so represent different "faces" to your opponents. Also, presumably, different actions have different impacts on the different ratings.
Great discussion here from the forum regarding what player profiling classifications are, and are there "correct" profiles to emulate. Forum questions and answers follow here:
1) Is there a "best" icon rating (set of numbers) to strive for?
2) What actions per rating should I take to change, manipulate, or generate a certain rating during play? For example, if the AF is a function of bets/calls then increasing the amount of the bet/raise should theoretically reduce the number of calls thereby increasing the AF. So, what type of action would result in "becoming" a different player?
I don't think you can say one icon is better to be than another. The thing that matters in all reality is the W$SD, that is you Won $$$ at Show Down. You can pretty much be assured that a duck and a calling station will lose long term. Rather than try and change one thing to make your icon change, better to review your game and start at the beginning, solid ABC.
What you have said so far is that you are a loose player, enter too many pots and take too many to showdown. (calling station) But you changed a little to get away from that and what you changed is your aggression, how often you would bet or raise. You ended up a duck, lots of hands and too much aggression. I suggest you review suns charts for starting hand selection in what seats. Use TI and watch those vids again. There are two sets of vids on Marty's sites you can subscribe to that are free. Sign up for both. Watch them again AND again.
The best thing you can do right now is start folding a LOT preflop. Look at TI group rank and fold everything group 5 and above in every seat no matter how pretty it looks to you. From UTG - to hijack seat fold everything group3 and up, (only play group 1 and 2 hands early). In the remaining seats you can add in group 3 to play. Play this solid until you hav only 5 or 6 players left in the stt, then you can play group 1-3 hands early and in the remaining seats you can play group 4 and 5 hands. Fold everything else.
Don't try bluffs, steals, freezes, blocks, squeezes, icm, NOTHING but basic solid ABC play. You won't get rich and it will be very boring. So what? Is it very exciting to reload? :lol: What you want to do is narrow your range and watch your opponents. Once you are able to command this kind of control over your hand selection you can then begin to add in other things like stealing of blinds and stealing the button. What works and when in what situation for that tactic. Get that working rght for you then look at post flop play, what to fold and when, betting strategies, etc...
That should take a hundred or so games and maybe a month or two. THEN you can start to look at expanding hand selection and positional plays, playing the player, suited connectors, suited gappers, ICM, you name it. Always take things in stages, get hold of it, make it yours, analyze it over time and in numbers so you get a real picture of what is going on. Any changes ever made should be one at a time for a period of time so you can track each one. That is a change for moving forward and expanding. To change and fall back, make sweeping changes across the board in all you to and drop to ABC basics. Long term you will break even or make a tiny profit. Might even lose a little. But you won't go broke over and over.
Why pay a lot to learn it when you can learn it all with little risk at a time?
Thanks for the advice, I'll continue to do that and go back to basics where I see I can. Let me be a little more specific. I've been getting the M Zone, and Sit and Go videos, and usually watch them two or three times when they arrive. I have also downloaded them and saved them so that I can go back and watch them again without being online. I realize the duck is loose and aggressive, based on the M Zone descriptions. The videos are what taught me to fold more.
Often times I find myself repeating Marty's mantra, "The flop WON'T help me!" It seems sometimes that folding is all I ever do while waiting for a hand I can play with confidence, which is okay. When I get careless and don't "follow the rules," I get knocked out relatively early. If I follow the rules, I have no problem breezing through the early stages and entering the middle stages NTM or, often, ITM. That is where the problems begin.
My biggest challenge is that I am dyslexic so sometimes abstract concepts can be confusing at times. The reality is that while I perform a PhD level, I process information like a seventh grader. So, the trick is getting the information into my brain. Once it's there, the sky's the limit. From that point I have no problem developing muscle memory. The videos are key for this. Also, I've spent 35 years in the food and beverage industry handing large amounts of individual details for 2 dozen people at a time under high pressure, high stress conditions so theoretically I should be able to apply the concepts successfully. I think what I have to do is train myself better for play the middle stages.
The middle stages are my weak point. I find that to be true, whether I'm in a 7000 seat tournament, a 3000 seat tournement, a 180 seat tournament, or a 9 seat Sit and Go. In the first three cases problems occur NTM. In the last case, I have problems with 7-5 players. Once I get to 4 players,I'm okay. These seem to be comparable moments in the games.
I've been having the most luck with a 90 seat double stack Sit and Go, although I rarely ever need more than half the chips and always survive at least half the players. About 60% of the time I make it through the middle stages very NTM or ITM, but always enter ITM with a very weak stack. I cash about 50%. In fact, while I've been browsing this forum. I played two of these tournaments back-to-back and finished ITM in both of them, 18th and 13th. Both experiences and TI numbers were nearly identical during progression of play. I'm getting ready to start at third one, and examine it again. It seems the duck is apparently coming from how I play the few hands that I do play in the middle stages. Does that make sense or am I kidding myself?
One thing of note, as Marty suggested in one of his videos, I downloaded the "Johnny Rothman" video. In it, Johnny recommended raises of 4x-5x, instead of 2x-3x, to better represent a strong hand and reduce the field. I have tried that with some success. Could that be part of the ranking problem? Is it whether you play the hand from a position or how much you bet when you play it, that determines the "loose aggression"?
I apologize if I seem overly analytical, it is how I process "puzzle pieces" best. I'm open minded to suggestions. When I question, it's not to challenge but, an attempt to make those puzzle pieces fit in a functional manner.
Well I'm not the be all end all on how to play poker, far from it. I hope others will jump in here with stuff. I would click on Phaedrus and Sun and JJ and Turn & Fall names then click on their posts, then scan their posts for other game strategies they have posted. You can get a better picture of things from the different perspectives. You can also just browse through the archives. There's one in there by me on $1 45 seaters. I am back to trying those again but not doing so well yet. But it's only been a few so far so will give it time.
I suspect that your identification of where you think you have problems in the 5 to 7 players left stt you will probably take care of making the changes to your game outlined above. I think that you have just been playing too wide and perhaps too aggressive. If you want you can PM me your player id and site and i can see if I have any other data on you in my software. If so I'll tell you what I have. I'm pretty good at reading data, just not great at coming in first often enough.
This is more to work on. Yes, I play on Full Tilt as well as Poker Stars, although nearly all of my recent play has been on FT because I was working on the free TI license, which I have accomplished, as well as a second license for my laptop. Wish I knew about RAKEBACK sooner :cry: . By adding in the Full Tilt academy videos into the mix, my plate will be full for a while. Also, I will try to peruse through forum posts some more. Because of the dyslexia it may take some time, so my posts may be sparse because this will all take time to process, particularly the reading.
Being so analytical, I try not to change too many variables at once. That way it is easier to identify problems. I'm hearing you, JP, that it sounds like I'm playing too aggressive. I read in a forum post that increasing aggression is right and correct as you progress through middle stages of play, but as a duck apparently I am too loose and aggressive. Maybe I have to better define aggression. My AF is typically around 1.2. Since the more aggressive betting (ie larger raises - 4x-5x vs 2x-3x) has gotten me closer to the money, I'm thinking I might first try and tighten up on what hands I place those bets on and folding more often pre-flop (which I'll call less aggressive play), since apparently, per forum posts, AF is based on post flop play. If that doesn't work, I'll change a different variable.
I say this because, It seems that many hand losses occur when I catch a wild hair and play the "chaos factor" or try and second guess another player. The reality is, if I am against a player who shows at least one tournament win on Poker DB and I don't have more than a premium hand, I should fold. This is probably my biggest failing. At my level, the odds in this situation are, I am out played. By recognizing my limitations and folding, I am out playing the player. Correct?
So, feedback here, is it reasonable to separate those two in analyzing aggression, aggressive betting (how much $) vs aggressive play (what/how many hands)? As always, no matter what I say, I'm open to as strict a criticism as you want too give and I'll take it to heart. I will continue to make mistakes, sometimes deliberately, because experience is the best teacher, and, being an experiential person, sometimes I need the experience to learn the lesson. So, right now I consider some of my money "R&D."
Oh, and I have no problem with anyone referring anyone else to my posts, even if it's to say, "Don't do what this guy did!" Use me as a foil if you want. That's what a forum is about and I don't take it personally. You probably learn more from general consensus over controversy than anywhere else. I suspect, as with many things, because of the "human factor," everyone must develop their own "style" and what works for them best. I think I read somewhere in the forum that above all else, we're playing the player. I just have to find my style.
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