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.