U should post every mtt bust-out hand for the next week into the apat academy section and see if you are making any fundamental errors. It will be good for your game regardless. Also, have a team-viewer/skype session with someone who"s opinion you value. There is 100% no better way of learning than this!
The final bust out hand is rarely where the fundamental errors are made.....
A very good point indeed. Its normally the case that someone who consistenly falls short of big wins is doing something wrong much earlier in the tournament, generally by playing too passively. However, it is also true that its next to impossible to win a tournament without emerging victorius in a coinflip or two or hitting any monster hands.
Take all the foul language out of my recent entries on this blog and there is a real frustration at how things have gone for me so far this year. I had one or two decent results in January but from the middle of that month onwards absolutely nothing has gone my way. Thankfully, my cash play has gone really well recently and somehow despite being a self-confessed awful Omaha Hi player, I"m consistently making money playing Omaha Hi/Lo.
I think my main saving grace is that, as the name of this blog indicates, I am operating to strict bankroll management guidelines. After nearly five years of playing, I also recently opened a bank account to allow me to separate my poker money from everything else. Its not that I"m a losing player, far from it, my poker winnings have always been absorbed into other areas. Since I started keeping a profit and loss for my play I"ve been in the black for 2 years and my only annual loss was in the region of $150. I suppose part of the frustration comes from playing way below what I regard as a level I am capable of playing at. Yes, i think I"m competive in $50 tournaments (Certainly in the ones that have been on Blue Square over the last couple of years!), but if I"m to stay within my own bankroll rules, that isn"t an option yet. Maybe, without those rules, I"d have had to take a break from the game.
Chris Ferguson took several months to move out of the freeroll and microstakes games he started at in his challenge and I suppose I could just be impatient. However, the next time I play in one of those micro stakes tournaments on Pokerstars with 5500 runners and get down to the final 200, that coinflip that could put me in the top 10 if it goes my way will be welcome. I fully expect to move up a buy-in level or two on the cash tables sometime soon, although I don"t want to rush things as I"m playing a variant I"m very new to, so recognise I have one or two deficincies to iron out.
I"ve never been a fan of posting exit hands. Its partly because, as Steve so rightly said, doing so only gives a very small part of the overall picture. The cards and chipstacks are only part of the equation; how did you think your opponents would react to how you played the hand in question? Why did you think they would react that way? Have you watched every single hand at your table in the tournament? Have you been watching repeats of "Top Gear" on Dave and/or trying to chat-up some very attractive woman from work on Facebook whilst playing? Without knowing all the thought process of the player in question and without seeing every hand played, exit hands only tell part of the story.
In terms of evaluating hands and tournaments, I"m fortunate in that almost all of my large family play the game to a reasonable standard, including one brother-in-law with a record of 2 cashes from 3 appearances in APAT live nationals. If there is a specific situation that I need to discuss, I"ve got someone on hand to run through things in some depth.
I suppose what this all boils down to is that since being a bit stricter with myself, I"ve not yet changed my mentality from that of the tournament player looking for one big hit to someone happy with building things gradually. At least I"m still in profit. I just need that little piece of luck to go my way at a crucial moment. Onetime!
