Playing a £30 rebuy/add on tonight at casino 2k guaranteed.... anyone got any tips for tourneys like this i.e tight or aggressive?
I have my best results in rebuy tournaments online and I would be looking to build a stack in the rebuy period taking any close gambles while around starting stack. Assuming you can rebuy right away for a double stack, approach it as a £150 tournament that may cost more or less. If you don't feel like you can afford to take a £150 hit you should honestly likely not play it. Even playing tourneys for a living for 5 years I cash in around 15% of my games, the long term profit comes from those top 3 finishes and you can't get that far by being worried about busting cos your on short money or whatever. Have to look at the long term as the variance in tournaments is quite frankly pretty ridiculous, playing good doesn't mean a thing on the night essentially. It will increase your chances long term though so remember that it's all about the long view, not questioning yourself over a well played hand just because you lost it and always looking to make improvements even if things are going well.
Some of this is just general advice, some of it specific to rebuys, and some specific to tournaments but remember once out of the rebuy period this is just the same as a freezeout. Playing a tight nitty preflop style may get you to a breakeven give or take over a large sample but honestly you won't get any better at real poker, which is making the most efficient decisions you can hand after hand. So many factors come into this and your starting hand strength is a relatively tiny part of it, especially when the stacks are deep, though it will probably yield some immediate improvement for a beginning player. Playing a 'perfect' preflop game and then proceeding to butcher the flop/turn/river in a cash game will likely see you get annihilated by anyone good in a cash game and will probably see a limited improvement in tournaments. The reason for the difference is there are less chances to make a mistake in the tournament as in the later stages the stacks are often shallow meaning you can regularly be allin already if it gets past the flop.
Realising you suck at poker is probably the best improvement an intermediate player can make though being honest. Even though I have made a living playing the game for 5 years I am nowhere near the best or the finished article and I make too many errors for my own liking. So many players delude themselves about their true level and it holds them back big time. The quicker you can identify where you are going wrong the quicker you can fix it, and improvement isn't always linear unfortunately (ie, leaks don't always stay fixed, they need maintenance over time). None of this is important if you are playing for camaraderie, to blow off steam, get away from the wife n kids or whatever but if you are serious about improving - and by posting on a forum asking for advice I would suggest you are - then there are probably one or 2 things you can take from this post.
I could, and have written essays on this game as it is so rich and varied with a nice blend of mathematics, psychology and gambling. However I am going to leave it right there as it is already getting a bit tl;dr.
If anyone would like a bit of poker literature I have a large collection of e-books too. Just pop me a PM and I can email them to ya!
