[Closed] LIVE tournament strategy for beginner needed

Normally i'd tell you to go allin every hand, you got lucky today. Play tight and aggressively, value bet big, do not bluff (the biggest bluff to pull of is a cbet, dont tripple barrel!!!) and pay attention to live tells (shaky hands, staring onto the board, glance at chips).

This could help you a lot:

Hey SilverSag,

Generally live poker is alot softer than online. Online you have alot of players who are playing for a living and have software tools to help them make decisions.

Although when people play live tournaments they want to make money usually especially at £50 tournaments and smaller they are there for the social interaction and not too concerned on the result.

Live poker you can also get good reads on your opponents. Although it isn't crucial, Mike Caro's little book of tells is a really interesting book and although some people would argue that it is dated it is still very relevant for small buy in local tournaments.

Although there are tonnes of positives about live poker of course you have to remember the negatives.

1) If you lose in the first 10 minutes you have to drive home and generally waste alot of time (this will effect your hourly rate ofc)

2) You get dealt alot less hands per hour compared to online. Online you can get 70+ hands per hour depending on the table and if you are playing 5-10 tournaments is over 500 hands an hour. Live poker you can expect to get dealt anywhere in the region of 10-30 hands per hour in a live tournament. For this you will need fantastic discipline to ensure you don't do anything stupid and keep your tournament life

3) Live tournaments sometimes pay upto 30% of the players. For example you could be playing in a tournament with 40 people and they will sometimes want to pay the WHOLE final table. Obviously we don't want this and would prefer a more aggresive prizepool

Congratulations on your 3rd place finish, keep us updated on your Live Poker progress and next time maybe you will take the gold medal away?

Originally posted by pleno1

1) If you lose in the first 10 minutes you have to drive home and generally waste alot of time (this will effect your hourly rate ofc)

Actually, I think this is quite an edge. It cuts down most of the early all-in monkeys. THEY will not get dressed, drive all the way to a casino, then go all-in in the first hand with KTo.

And since those players are bad anyways (live or online) having the opportunity to actually outplay them and not only call their shove pre with a wide range (which subjects you to "bad luck") is not only an edge, but lots of fun

Well the top 3 places made a deal and we split the pot, so I did get the maximum payout

Interesting thing was that deal was reached at the moment when all my chips were already pushed (A2o) in and another guy was sitting and thinking about calling it with 66.

We made a deal mid-hand, he called, I didn't improve and was busted out. So it really was the last moment for the deal :f_biggrin:

Btw, the entry fee was $100, there was 67 entrants and top 8 places were in the money (whole 10 places of final table if you count small bonuses for online playing which were part of the prize), so you were bang on about the setup of small local tournaments.

And you were right about games being soft. I was playing similarly to online cash games and with my tight image and aggressive, 4 BB openraises I was being able to loosen up and steal blinds from EP at the later stages of tournament

p.s. what about the books guys? Advice is OK, but any books I can read? Not about tells, but about overall strategy. Can I use articles about online MTT's for guidance?

Dan Harrington has three books covering live tournament play:

Harrington on Hold'em: Volume I: Strategic Play
Harrington on Hold'em: Volume II: The Endgame
Harrington on Hold'em: Volume III: The Workbook