Looking for Discipline in the Big Blind

I got in seven more sit 'n go tournaments on Friday and Saturday. I decided to stay down at the $1.20 level and see if I can make a profit of $20 there, then move up to the $3.40 tourneys. My results were one 1st, two 2nd, a 3rd, a 4th, 5th, and 7th. Four out of seven in the money means my discipline is paying off.

I'm still finding one place where I'm having problems, the discipline to lay down a hand that I know is beat. This usually happens when I'm in the big blind and everyone limps in and allows me to check in with any two cards. I'll usually hit middle or bottom pair and find it hard to let it go. Here's an example.


PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $1.00+$0.20 Tournament, 10/20 Blinds (9 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

UTG+1 (t1490)
MP1 (t1590)
MP2 (t1210)
MP3 (t2170)
CO (t1740)
Button (t1300)
SB (t1100)
Kosh (BB) (t1480)
UTG (t1420)

Kosh's M: 49.33

Preflop: Kosh is BB with ,
2 folds, MP1 calls t20, MP2 raises to t100, 4 folds, Kosh calls t80, 1 fold

Flop: (t230) , , (2 players)
Kosh checks, MP2 bets t160, Kosh calls t160

Turn: (t550) (2 players)
Kosh bets t275, MP2 raises to t550, Kosh calls t275

River: (t1650) (2 players)
Kosh checks, MP2 bets t400 (All-In), Kosh calls t400

Total pot: t2450

Results in white below:
Kosh had 9, Q (one pair, Queens).
MP2 had A, Q (two pair, Aces and Queens).
Outcome: MP2 won t2450

I knew in my head I was probably beat with the Ace and King on board, but my hand kept clicking the call button. This hand caught my eye on Friday and I worked on it Saturday. I think it paid off with good results in Saturday's tournaments.

Pump Up the Volume

I played in five tournaments on Tuesday. The first one was a $5.50 sit n go. I was card dead for the entire tournament, by the time the blinds got to 75/150 I was down to about 8BB and I went all in with Ks Ts. I ended up losing to pocket Aces when I failed to connect with anything on the board.

I wanted to play some more, so I decided to go down in stakes to the $1.20 and see what I could do there. I played three of these busting out at 6th, 4th, and 4th respectively. I went back and looked at these tournaments. I was playing pretty well, but I guess at some point I got impatient or undisciplined and tried to pull off some cute move or a bluff with trash. At that point it hit me, I don't think you can get away with bluffing at this level. I decided to try one more $1.20 tournament and I was going to keep my discipline and play very tight and aggressive. It worked, I ended up winning the tournament. I learned my lesson, no more cute stuff for me, I'll stick to tight and right.

Third Time is Not the Charm

Played in tournament number 3 today. Ended up busting out in 6th place. It was a very tight table. I busted out with KQs and the end results were very similar to the hand in tournament number 2. I think I need to stay away from Queens. lol

I did have a hand that was questionable for me. Not a lot of raising going on at this point in the tournament, the table seemed very tight. I wasn't sure what to do, so I followed the advice in Sit 'n Go Strategy, "if you're unsure and the blinds are low, just fold." Maybe I should have raised after the flop? I don't know.



PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $5.00+$0.50 Tournament, 50/100 Blinds (7 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

UTG (t2770)
MP1 (t2090)
MP2 (t1390)
Kosh (CO) (t1580)
Button (t1545)
SB (t2490)
BB (t1635)

Kosh's M: 10.53

Preflop: Kosh is CO with ,
1 fold, MP1 calls t100, 1 fold, Kosh calls t100, 1 fold, SB calls t50, BB checks

Flop: (t400) , , (4 players)
SB checks, BB bets t300, 1 fold, Kosh calls t300, 1 fold

Turn: (t1000) (2 players)
BB bets t500, Kosh folds

Total pot: t1000

Tourney #2, What Was I Thinking?

I was doing pretty well in this one up to this point. I was the chip leader with 5 people left and had a good chance of making it into the money. That is, until my brain decided to turn off. QJo? Under the Gun? Wow! I'm not even sure what I was doing. Trying to make a move? No idea. I guess I might have been trying to steal the blinds, even so, I think I should have only tried that if the cards had been suited. However, with that said, I still should have folded to the reraise after the flop. On the bright side, I made it into mid blind play this time and busted out 4th as the bubble boy.



PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $5.00+$0.50 Tournament, 50/100 Blinds (5 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

SB (t1980)
BB (t3320)
Kosh (UTG) (t3910)
MP (t3635)
Button (t655)

Kosh's M: 26.07

Preflop: Kosh is UTG with ,
Kosh raises to t300, 3 folds, BB calls t200

Flop: (t650) , , (2 players)
BB checks, Kosh bets t325, BB raises to t1300, Kosh calls t975

Turn: (t3250) (2 players)
BB bets t1720 (All-In), Kosh calls t1720

River: (t6690) (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: t6690

Results in white below:
BB had A, K (two pair, Kings and eights).
Kosh had J, Q (two pair, Queens and eights).
Outcome: BB won t6690

First Tourney and How I Screwed It Up

I played my first $5.50 sit 'n go tournament today. Yesterday I went over the areas I highlighted in the book Sit 'n Go Strategy and I specifically remember one part I had highlighted. From page 19 under premium hands, it's talking about having pocket kings or queens. "If you do get callers to a raise or reraise, and an ace or king comes to your queens or an ace to your kings, tend to give up against multiple opponents or a lot of action."

If only I had remembered this during the tournament.



PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $5.00+$0.50 Tournament, 25/50 Blinds (7 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

MP2 (t1240)
CO (t3075)
Button (t1520)
SB (t2388)
Kosh (BB) (t1505)
UTG (t1160)
MP1 (t2612)

Kosh's M: 20.07

Preflop: Kosh is BB with ,
2 folds, MP2 raises to t150, 2 folds, SB calls t125, Kosh raises to t250, MP2 calls t100, SB calls t100

Flop: (t750) , , (3 players)
SB checks, Kosh bets t300, MP2 raises to t600, 1 fold, Kosh calls t300

Turn: (t1950) (2 players)
Kosh checks, MP2 bets t390 (All-In), Kosh calls t390

River: (t2730) (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: t2730

Results in white below:
Kosh had K, K (one pair, Kings).
MP2 had K, A (one pair, Aces).
Outcome: MP2 won t2730


I even remember thinking in the back of my head as I made the flop reraise call, does he have Aces or Ace-King. Afterwards I wrote on the bottom of my starting hands sheet, "If you have KK and an Ace comes, fucking fold to a reraise!!!" Live and learn, I guess.

Welcome and Introduction

I was going to start playing poker about a year and a half ago, but got side tracked with moving and other things. Now that things have settled down, I think I'll get back into playing poker. I thought I'd start out by reading a couple of books during the month of December to get a decent starting strategy. That way, I can get a fresh start playing when the new year begins. I'm going to start out playing Sit 'n Go tournaments, then move on to cash games and multi-table tournaments later on.

I picked up a couple of books on online poker and sit 'n go tournaments in particular. I began with Online Ace by Scott Fischman. It was a decent book, but seemed very basic. The main thing I got out of it was what he called Factors. These are questions you should ask yourself during each hand before you make a decision, such as:

How many chips do I have?
What position am I in?
What is my table image?
What do I think of my opponents?
What is the texture of the board?
What are the structural situations (blind and antes)?
What are the odds?

I printed these factors out and put them up on a cork board near the desk I normally play on. I'll try to look at these once in a while to remind myself to think about these questions during each hand I play.

The next book I read was Sit 'n Go Strategy by Collin Moshman. This book blew away Online Ace. S'nG Strategy is filled with great content. It covers sit 'n gos from start to finish, the business of sit 'n gos, and lots and lots of sample hands to study. If you're going to play sit 'n gos this is a must read.

I got a lot out of this book. I made a few charts using this book and put them in this spreadsheet. You can find starting hands for low blind play, a chip EV calculator, outs and the odds they give, and when to push once you're short stacked all in this spreadsheet. I printed most of these out and stuck them to my cork board.

Now it's time to get started. I deposited $275 on Pokerstars, which gives me 50 buy ins for the $5.50 sit 'n gos. My plan is to start there and build my bankroll up, if I can reach $550 then I'll move up the $11 tourneys. You can find me on Pokerstars as xKingKoshx. See you at the table.