PokerStars Hiatus is Over

Alright folks. Today will mark my first day back at the real money tables on PokerStars in over a month. After having a bad run I decided to get away from the game for a while. I continued to play FPP qualifier games but no serious online tournaments. The game was frustrating me and I didn’t want to attempt to play through the frustration this time around. Instead I stepped away and did a lot of reading.

One of the first books I picked up was The Poker Tournament Formula by Arnold Schneider. This was the last book that I purchased about eight months ago and I thought it had very relevant content. In particular relevant content in regards to fast format online poker tournaments. What I also realized is that, although being successful, the game has changed yet again and I was not making the adjustments I needed to make to recalibrate. The low-buy poker tournaments are now hyper aggressive where they used to simply be aggressive.

The difference being that guys are now playing this style of poker througout the entire poker tournament. This was not the case one year ago on PokerStars. I am not sure what prompted the change nor am I overly thrilled about it but I definitely was having a hard time adjusting to it and had refused to alter my style of play enough to combat it. Funny thing is that I was still making final tables at the same rate but I was getting busted with people taking draws on me with tons of chips. Even in the Sunday Millions a while back I was doing really well and a guy drew out on me for a flush over my set.

This is the kind of poker that is being played online now. Poker strategy be damned! So, now that I have had an opportunity to ponder my own shortcomings and address them I expect to reap the benefits of my analysis. We will find out very soon. I will be back at it tonight.

Take care!

Curtis III