The Poker Tournament Formula 2 has been a great read. Arnold Snyder took his book to the next level and explored slow structure tournaments and all of the elements needed to win in them. PTF1 explored fast structure tournaments and what is needed marvelously but this book took even some of Dan Harrington’s concepts and expanded upon them even further.

Arnold doesn’t spend a whole lot of time worrying about crunching numbers. Instead he takes the approach of getting directly into what you need to know. He analyzes tournament structure and explains how to determine just how aggressive or passively you will need to play. He takes on Chip Utility and explains why it is so important to maintain an above average chip stack instead of simply calling them Red, Yellow, Orange, and Green.  Arnold also talks about the various stages of slow structure tournaments and how each of them should be approached. This includes final table play and deal making.

Snyder also goes in-depth in explaining why Dan Harrington’s approach may not be the ideal way of playing tournaments today versus three years ago. Overall, this book has excellent material for the above average player that is looking to take his or her game to the next level. It also gives you an entirely different way of thinking about tournament play in terms of concepts and there application. This is a MUST HAVE book and a very worthy rival to the Harrington on Hold’em series.

Why should you join the PPA? If you play online poker the PPA is one of two organizations actively fighting for your right to play online poker in the United States. The other organization is the IMEGA. This is a major deal to most of us who believe our rights are being violated simply because we enjoy playing poker online. I don’t need to get into all of the gory details of how it happened. I think most of us know how the UIGEA came about at this point. The fact of the matter is that joining the PPA is free and only takes a few minutes to do. So make some time and join the fight to make online poker legal in the United States.

Poker Players Alliance

I did not make it to day two of the tournament. No bad beats or anything. However, I lost a critical race at the end of Day 1 that would have put me into Day 2. First things first. The Heartland Poker Tour is extremely well run and the levels were extended to 40 minutes before the tourney started giving us even more play for our buy-in. That was a pleasant surprise. The competition was tough but I was very prepared for it and fared well after the first break.

I doubled up with [A][A] after I re-raised a player holding [K][K] and he decided to push on me. After that I stole blinds and kind of settled into a routine until I picked up [Q][Q] and doubled up again. We started with 15k but I was down to 12k before I doubled up the first time. The blinds continued to go up and the antes kicked in at level 6. I lost a few pots and found myself down to around 30k. The average stack was at 24k so I knew my chip utility was in need of a boost and fast. During this period the blinds were at $1200 / $800 and I got moved to a table with a couple of fairly aggressive players to my right. They pounded my blinds during four orbits and I vowed to make a stand next time around with any kind of pocket pair.

Finally, I pick up [A][K] with my 24k and the blinds about to go up again. The player to my right had me covered by about 10k. The action folded around to him and he raised as he had the last four orbits. I re-raised all-in knowing that I was going all the way with my Ace King. He thought for what seemed like eternity until another player called the clock. Finally, he reluctantly called and showed [3][3]. The race was on and I lost the hand. Point blank and end of story. The tournament was a blast but I am disappointed that it ended the way it did. Nothing much I can add other than that. If you get an opportunity to play on any of the poker tours I would highly recommend you do it. It’s a great way to find out just where your game is at.

As a poker blogger I take a great deal of pride in conveying information to my readers about the game that I love. Whether it’s poker strategy, poker news or an event that is being played it’s my job to get you the information about what’s going on as accurately as possible.

Today is the beginning of what I hope to be a three day journey to what I call the “Promised Land” or Final Table. I am playing my second professional poker tournament but my first on any of the three tours. The buy-in is $1,100 dollars and the competition is going to be tough. Maybe not WPT tough but still very skilled players no matter how you mix it.

As I told my friend earlier today, “It’s easy to give players advice on what they should do from behind a blog but an entirely different ball game to go out and perform at a high level in a professional tournament.”  To be perfectly honest with you I am prepared to play this tournament and confident that I will do well. I expect to play well in any event I enter and the Heartland Poker Tour is no different.

This is a two day event with a six player televised Final Table on day three. I will post as soon as I arrive home tomorrow evening. Thanks for your support!

Curtom

During my escapade into this weeks poker tournaments. I noticed that the value of stealing the blinds is heightened considerably in live tournaments. It will be even more important for me during the Main Event tomorrow. I think we all understand that you will never get enough cards to sustain you throughout an entire tournament. Ultimately, you are going to have to steal blinds in order to keep your stack viable.

The thing I try to do is identify the player types I have at my table first. Once I have done this then I have a good idea of who is waiting for premium hands and who is going to fold like a lawn chair. Last Sunday stealing the blinds is what kept me a live during a very dry run of cards for an hour. I only stole three blinds but they were enough to keep me going. That’s the point of the exercise. You don’t have to try to steal every single blind. You just need to steal enough to get you through until you can pick up some good cards.

Usually, I will raise in position and make it two-and-a-half times the Big Blind. This is enough to make them consider the call with a good hand but with a marginal or bad hand most of the weaker player will simply fold. I would raise a little more in an online format because the play is looser.

The cycle never ends and it becomes more important the deeper you go into the tournament.

The days are getting shorter and shorter. I thought it would take forever to get to the HPT tournament but the days seem to be running together as the tournament approaches. A poker buddy of mine played a Super Satellite last night and got bad beat out at 14th. He was only four players away from winning the seat. I know that feeling and it sucks big time. We have all been there. I suppose telling him how great he played was of little consolation but it was the truth. Mariano has proven to be a fantastic online and live player and you root for your friends when you know they have what it takes.

Anyhow, I have entered into a more relaxed state of mind now. The weekend was kind of hectic with all tournaments and running around so I am just taking it easy this week. I will not play another poker tournament until the HPT Main Event Friday. My mind is clear and I have nothing but positive thoughts going in. That’s how it should be. I am still reading TPF2 and that is my only poker activity at this time. All I want to do at this point is enter the tournament with a clear head and peaceful soul and I will do just fine.

This past weekend I got a very small taste of what it’s like to play in meaningful big time Super Satellites. I played two of these tournaments for the Heartland Poker Tour. Each of them had their own personality and it wasn’t like I have not sat down with tough players before either but it was a very different feel from playing in Las Vegas. The players were extremely aggressive at my tables and that usually lends itself to me being able to pick up a lot of chips. Unfortunately, the first tourney I was completely card dead and the second tournament I got bad beat out of three-quarters of the way through.

The thing I learned over this weekend was that there is no way I would every want to play poker professionally. None! The game is extremely challenging, which I love, but the emotional ups an downs almost from hand to hand playing every week would drive me absolutely insane. Yet, I still had a lot of fun playing them even though I did not get the results I sought. The structure was fast and you really needed to double up immediately to have a shot at gaining enough momentum to overcome the sixth level in blinds on up. I wouldn’t change anything regarding my play. I played it as best I could and didn’t make any major mistakes that hurt me. So, I march on and buy-in to the HPT this Friday where the structure is more suitable to my game and the chip stacks start at 15k.

I played my first Heartland Poker Tour Satellite today. It was a $130 buy-in with a pretty fast structure. $5000 starting chips, 20 minute levels, and $50/$25 blinds that doubled each time. We had 93 players total and there were 10 seats at stake in the Main Event. Overall, the tournament was well run and there were very good dealers. An automatic shuffler never hurts and I got to see plenty of hands. The problem is that 99% of my hands were pure garbage. I wasn’t even getting good enough hands as spec hands in position. Now I have had bad runs of cards before but this almost had me in tears.

When I finally did pick up a hand, Pocket Aces, in the Big Blind, the action folded around to the button after the table had been like the wild wild west the entire first two hours. I raised and everyone folded. Unreal! Realistically it wasn’t that bad. Things like this happen from time to time if you play often enough. Tomorrow is a new day and I am looking forward to mixing it up in the same Super Satellite and winning that seat.

I have been unable to put this book down since I purchased it. Arnold Snyder has not only expanded from his thinking in PTF1 but he forces the reader to reconsider all facets of their game. This book is absolutely thought provoking and a very compelling read.

The really cool thing about PTF2 is that I had already been doing many things simply as tweaks to my own game and I have been reaping the benefits of those small changes to my game. However, to those that are new players or seem stuck in a rut both PTF1 and PTF2 are books that will really get into your head and make you re-consider what you believe to be a good approach to winning poker tournaments.

A full review will be coming soon

After playing a little over 12,000 hands Patrick Antonious has begun to extend his lead in the Durrr Challenge. Antonious is now up $84,544.00. Over the past two weeks the lead had exchanged hands a few times but this is the largest lead to date that either player has had. It will be interesting to see of Antonious can hold on to it and extend it even further. Omaha is an extremely volatile game and big swings come with the territory so it ought to be interesting if either player can move into the six figure range and stay there for any period of time long enough to win the Challenge outright.

I know it may sound a bit strange but I learned my lesson a long time ago about posting in poker forums. Reading poker forums is an entirely different thing though. I belong to all of the most popular poker forums and I must admit there is quite a bit of relevant information in them. However, the flame wars can be extremely harsh, hateful, and downright childish. So, these days I simply search and read and get the information I need and no longer participate in the gang-like conversations.

Just last week I happened to be catching up on the latest news on a very popular forum and a member posted a dissertation on why a particular web site would or would not be likely to be rigged. Some of the post was interesting although I personally believed that the individual was trying to impress readers with his knowledge of “whatever.” After reading the post I was no more convinced that sites are rigged anymore than before I read the post.

Here is where it got interesting though. Each reply underneath his post pretty much was a “You are paranoid and we have no idea what the point of your article was” type of response. The posters reply to them was “Idiot1, Idiot2, Idiot3, etc. etc.” I stopped reading the responses after he reached idiot5.

Whether the owners of poker forums realize it or not the name calling and flame wars coupled with the wolf pack mentality turn off many would be posters like myself. The idea of a forum is to share ideas and information, not to attack posters simply because you disagree with there thinking. I don’t suspect things will change any and there are actually some very well run poker forums that do not tolerate this kind of foolishness. It’s just sad that the most popular ones do.

A while back I wrote a post about the Tom Dwan Challenge and said it was dumb. I caught some flack about that post and I also got a lot of support too. One thing is for sure and that is that Tom Dwan fans are extremely passionate and that makes for some interesting banter amongst poker bloggers like myself. Since then I have purposely taken some time to follow-up on Tom at Full Tilt and also read everything I could get my hands on about his personal life and upbringing. What I found was quite compelling and very telling of what I now deem as the “new age” online poker professional.

The fact of the matter is that Tom Dwan is in his element online, despite his impressive live tournament and PAD run, and no one can argue with that. I understand that now. I am sure if he actually focused on his live play a bit more he would have even more success than he has to date. However, what I didn’t understand before that I do now about Dwan is that he simply has no serious desire to play live on a full time basis. Why should he when he kills the online Omaha and No Limit games?

I must admit that I give more respect to players that perform well live in cash games or poker tournaments and I don’t feel there is any fault in that. This is not to say that Dwan or any of the other online pros accomplishments are diminished at all. It is simply my opinion. I still believe it takes more skill to play live than online simply because you take away a key element of the game when you are online – people. I also learned that Tom has an extremely short attention span as do most players in his age group. However, what he does have is focus on the game of poker and any player that can run up $50 to over $100k you have got to respect.

What I failed to understand about Dwan earlier is that he is all about the here and now. He is a thrill seeker, albeit a skilled one, and seeks the biggest kill he can find at that particular moment. Plain and simple. Dwan has stated that he could care less if he lost his bankroll and that he could easily get staked and re-build if he had to. Although that is likely to be very true it reeks of a degenerate gambler and that scares me for someone that young to think this way. With an estimated $10 Million dollar bankroll you would think any player would put half of it away in investments / retirement and play on the rest. On the other hand, maybe his lack of respect for money is what makes him the player he is. Who knows?

What I do know is that I have a much clearer understanding of what makes Tom Dwan tick and I have no qualms admitting when I am wrong. Tom is a cash game specialist. Nothing wrong with that. Having said that, the Tom Dwan Challenge makes perfectly good sense for him and woe to the players that enter the lions den for discretion is the better part of valor.

The time is here people. Today is the day I play in the Pokerstars Spring Championship of Online Poker Main Event. I have had a fantastic week in multi-table tournament play overall with 5 Final Tables out of 8 tourneys with 1 win. I don’t think I can tune up any better than that.

So, if you are not playing the Main Event feel free to stop by and rail if you like. My screen name is “CURTOM” Have a great Easter and enjoy your day.

Let the count down begin folks! There are now two days left until the SCOOP Main Event. I am ready to rock and roll and wish each of you good luck that have entered the tournament unless I am All-In against you.

LOL

Anyhow, I will be posting immediately after the end of day one and hopefully day two to let you know where I stand. Feel free to stop by and rail if you like.

Curtom

After posting that Clonie Gowens lawsuit had been dismissed earlier today from what is usually a reliable source it appears that this may not be the case. Clonie contacted Do or Die Poker directly and has informed us that the suite is still pending.

Obviously, when a participant in any scenario contacts us with first hand information we have to consider it credible until proven differently. Please accept our apologies regarding the post on the pending litigation between Clonie Gowen and Full Tilt.