Lesson learned

I spent two days thinking about last weeks BBT2 results. What really bothered me was that in two of the BBT2 tournaments last week, I was at one point in the top 3 in chips, if not the chip leader. Yet, I had little to show for it other than a handful of magic corn and some BBT2 points.

I spend this weekend reading Harrington Vol 3(the workbook quizzes) and spotted this article at 2+2 which summed up my week very nicely.

For those of you who don't enjoy long hand for hand posts, here is the payoff paragraph:
If I could play this final table again, I would be much more aggressive, especially from the small blind. During the final table, I folded my SB without a raise in front of me 3 times, and raised when it was folded to me there only twice. I rarely defended my blinds, even 3 and four handed. I wish I had paid less attention to my cards and more attention to making moves from late position when it was folded to me. I should have tried to be more of a bully when I had the chip lead, and tried some different moves such as re-steals.

Indeed, that was a summary of my play last week. But what ALSO struck me from my own ruminations, was that because of the larger than normal fields, I was shifting TOO LATE to phase 3 play. Many of you already know the 3 phases: Donk, TAG and FINAL. In the donk stage we play anything worth seeing a flop with from position. In the MIDDLE stages, we play tight-aggressive using our post-flop skills to outplay our opponents. In the FINAL stage, we STEAL, RE-STEAL, PUSH and BULLY (if applicable). I usually do this at the final table with a field of 45. But with a field of 110, its more of a blinds based formula. I could no longer afford to wait until we reached the points, I needed to start my advanced play at about 3 tables.

If you read my posts from last week, I obviously did not attempt any re-steals with 24 players left.

Lesson learned.
"In order to live, you must be willing to die." - Amir Vahedi