Ask Omni - Poker Advice

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Tourney question. I've tried playing a couple online tourneys. Single table I do okay, but usually I only play 1-5 pound ones for those. Larger, multi-table ones, I think I play afraid. I want to finish in the money even if it's only getting my money back and I feel like I'm crippling myself that way.
How do you play? What's your basic tourney strategy if you don't mind sharing? Do you push it all in with stuff like AA AK KK AQ QQ, etc.? I went all in with AA a couple days ago and got called by JJ and the guy caught a J on the turn. I ended up placing 56 (1-50 got paid). Arghh. I was pretty low in chip count although not quite short stacked. If at that point I just wanted to make it to 50 at least, should I have folded the AA?

[omniscient]

Tourney question. I've tried playing a couple online tourneys. Single table I do okay, but usually I only play 1-5 pound ones for those. Larger, multi-table ones, I think I play afraid. I want to finish in the money even if it's only getting my money back and I feel like I'm crippling myself that way.
How do you play? What's your basic tourney strategy if you don't mind sharing? Do you push it all in with stuff like AA AK KK AQ QQ, etc.? I went all in with AA a couple days ago and got called by JJ and the guy caught a J on the turn. I ended up placing 56 (1-50 got paid). Arghh. I was pretty low in chip count although not quite short stacked. If at that point I just wanted to make it to 50 at least, should I have folded the AA?

Well the way I play, I would have to write about several topics and it would take forever, although I can if you really want me to. Basically, you need to familiarize yourself with the gap concept. there is a very important general principle understood by all good poker players. That is, you need a better hand to play against someone who has already opened the betting than you would need to open yourself. For example, you would raise with Ace Jack in middle position if no one was in yet but you would never call with it if someone had raised in early position and was a tight player, so basically same hand, different concepts on if you would call or fold and that's the gap concept. When you say, do I push all in with stuff like AA, KK, AK, it all matters on the exact situation and what is going on, I need to know the blind levels at that point compared to my chip stack, I need to know if I am short stacked (if you are less than ten times the big blind in chips you are short stacked), I need to know what position I am in, and how I am going to play it to get the most money out of it. It is completely fine if you lost all your chips on an all in with AA, you had the best hand and he got lucky, it happens and that's poker sometimes. I would have to know all the details to know what I would have done with that hand at the exact situation but if he went all in then of course you should have called, you didn't make any mistakes. If you are saying you wanted to make it to 50 and should you have folded I would say yes if you think by not playing another hand that you could have gotten 6 more players to go out without you losing. But I could care less about 50th or being in the money. Poker is heavy handed at the top, it is always the top 3 that get all the money, everything else is a waste of time. So there is no way in hell I would have folded the AA just to get in the money because for me, I want to get as many chips as I can to get to the final table and do some damage, and that is what you need to do, you need to think more further down than 50th. Hope this all helped, I'll be more than happy to answer more questions you have.

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For the AA, I was in early position. Earlier in the game though, I had AQ-suited and my brother who was playing with me wanted to go all-in when a player in front of us made a sizeable raise, around 10x bb. I was hesitant to even call. We ended up calling, I don't remember what the guy had, but one other person called too. Flop was rainbow with a couple low cards and a K. It didn't improve us and after another similar bet, we folded. The turn and river came Q and A respectively. My brother blamed me for losing that huge pot, saying that if we had been all-in we wouldn't have been able to fold and would have won it.

So, from the beginning, you play to win the most chips and not necessarily to stick around? I think I'm slowly realizing that while I may be able to last a little longer, but unless I take chances and push even my small edges, I'll never win enough to have a shot at 1st.

What do you think of online play? Is there money to be made there or is it easier to do it live?

[omniscient]

For the AA, I was in early position. Earlier in the game though, I had AQ-suited and my brother who was playing with me wanted to go all-in when a player in front of us made a sizeable raise, around 10x bb. I was hesitant to even call. We ended up calling, I don't remember what the guy had, but one other person called too. Flop was rainbow with a couple low cards and a K. It didn't improve us and after another similar bet, we folded. The turn and river came Q and A respectively. My brother blamed me for losing that huge pot, saying that if we had been all-in we wouldn't have been able to fold and would have won it.

So, from the beginning, you play to win the most chips and not necessarily to stick around? I think I'm slowly realizing that while I may be able to last a little longer, but unless I take chances and push even my small edges, I'll never win enough to have a shot at 1st.

What do you think of online play? Is there money to be made there or is it easier to do it live?

AQ suited is a decent hand but if the guy made a raise ten times the big blind I probably wouldnt have called unless the blinds were 10/15 and he raised 150 and I had a lot of chips already then I would. But usually a good raise is 3 or 4 times the big blind, ten is over doing it. Your brother shouldnt blame you for what happened, like I said that's poker and there will be many times where you folded and it could have ended up that you would have won, you have to brush that off and not think about it. You didn't have anything so you folded and he was still betting big so there is nothing you can do, why would you want to go all in with AQ that early in the tournament and risk losing the whole thing. I never risk my whole tournament on a coin flip. As time goes by I notice the less I go all in in tournaments now. Last tournament I made the money and only went all in once and that is when I lost.

I don't necessarily try to get the most chips over sticking around but yes that should be the general principle. You will notice that 99% of the time if you are just trying to stick around and survive you will just barely make money and lose everytime because you will slowly lose all your chips because the blinds are so high. If you truly want to do good and try to place in the top 5 in a tournament you have to not care about sticking around later on in the tourney you have to try to build a chip stack that is extremely high to survive. I am going on Tuesday to Bicycle to play, you can come and play but the buy in is 150 + 25 , so it still might be high.

And ask away still if you have questions, I enjoy answering them.

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Thanks! You're faster and easier than reading a tourney book. I don't have the time to read one right now. I still need to finish Theory of Poker. I'm not even halfway into that.
150 is too high. I've been playing on willhill.com. They do like 15-30k gtd tourneys for like 40-60 pounds pretty often. I'll sometimes split that w/ my brother (he's hoping to win a nice 5k or so to get him started). Usually I'll play just single table ones for like 5.

[omniscient]

The World Series Of Poker also started a couple weeks ago. The main event is in like 3 weeks and first place will probably pay 10 million dollars this time. Right now the regular events all the buy ins range from 1000 dollars to 5000 dollars.

[omniscient]

Just got back from Vegas, was there for the World Series Of Poker. The main event started in the morning. I left after a few hours of watching. I came back even on my money which is ok I guess and played 2 1000 dollar buy in satellites and didn't get in but made my money back on other tournaments.

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Wow, $1000 satellites? Balls buddy... Sheesh.
Glad you weren't in the negative for the trip. I hope you had some fun too.

On related note... Everytime I watch anything with Moneymaker I become more and more certain that his entire win was just a fluke. He just got very lucky ... extremely unlikely that someone could get lucky and hit what they need that many times, but still possible and I think that's what happened with him. His subsequent play has been SOOOO unremarkable!

[omniscient]

Wow, $1000 satellites? Balls buddy... Sheesh.
Glad you weren't in the negative for the trip. I hope you had some fun too.

On related note... Everytime I watch anything with Moneymaker I become more and more certain that his entire win was just a fluke. He just got very lucky ... extremely unlikely that someone could get lucky and hit what they need that many times, but still possible and I think that's what happened with him. His subsequent play has been SOOOO unremarkable!

Altough he did get lucky a few times, he obviously did play well to get there. Television only shows you the all-ins, but it doesn't show the rest of the time which accounts for 90% of everything else like stealing blinds and bullying the short stacks.

Moneymaker made the final table of one of the WPT events last year and it is one of their episodes I just don't remember which one, so he can't be a fluke. Now lets see who will be the next Raymer.

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I didn't see Raymer's WSOP.
From watching Moneymaker on tv... I dunno. It seems like he doesn't make the correct plays often. The hosts point it out too. Maybe he's just switching it up.