Learning Less and Winning More

This continues to be an interesting problem.  In my first live tournament since my previous post I cashed again,  3rd of 39 players for $155.  After subtracting the $25 buy-in, $10 add-on and $10 dealer tip, my profit was $120.  That's the good news.  The bad news is that I accomplished that by studying less and thinking about fewer things.

I have been able to play a few online tournaments in the last couple weeks. As stated in my previous post, I'm trying not to learn too much at once, so I've been concentrating on one thing--continuation betting.*

I've been c-betting a lot more in my online tournaments, and I have been succesful in picking up a lot of pots where I didn't have much of a hand.  But when I played live today I had to concentrate once again on the table mechanics, especially keeping track of pot sizes and player stack sizes.  I did a little better at that last night, but it took so much concentration that I never thought once about how often I was continuation betting.  That part of my game was on autopilot.

So, I'm making money when I go to The Big Game Room, and that's definitely a good thing.  But it also brings up an issue that a lot of players deal with, short-term money versus long-term goals.  Studying and learning are for the long-term, and the things that I learn have to be applied at some point.  Poker is all about the long-term, about studying and improving, and being a winner over hundreds of tournaments and thousands of hands.  What happens over a week or a month shouldn't matter at all.

On the other hand, I don't have much of a live bankroll.  I started from zero, when in fact I shouldn't be playing any tournament with under 100 buy-ins (which means a $3,500 bankroll for a $25 + $10 tournament.)  My bankroll is less than 10% of that.

In the short term, these cashes will increase my bankroll, and that's important.  The long-term view is that if I took more risks and brought more skills to the table, I wouldn't cash as often, but I would be a contender to win the tournament much of the time.

Winning money playing poker tournaments isn't about playing to cash, it's about playing to win.  Depending on tournament structures, just a few first places are usually worth  much more than many small cashes.  If I had won my last two live tournaments, I would have cashed for around $1,100.

I'm not good enough yet to win tournaments like this, with many players who study, and talk about strategy with each other.  I don't continuation bet enough to build a big enough stack in the early levels to be a serious contender for first place.  In all of the live tournaments in TBGR where I have cashed, when we got into the money the chip leader always had a stack several times larger than mine.

It's an interesting problem, and it's very strange that I can apply a concept in online tournaments, but then have to ignore that same concept playing live.  As much as is goes against everything I know about playing poker, I have to think about the short-term.  I have to concentrate on my mechanical weaknesses before I try to apply intermediate-to-advanced concepts at a live table.

----------

*From http://www.pokerology.com/lessons/the-continuation-bet/:

A bet from a player on the flop who raised pre-flop is known as a continuation bet or simply a c-bet. That player has continued to seize the initiative, hence the term, continuation bet. The normal use of the continuation bet is by a player in position against a lone opponent who has checked on the flop. The use of a continuation bet is rooted in the wisdom that most of the time one’s hand does not improve on the flop. Therefore the first player to bet may take down the pot right then and there.