Before I go and spew off another couple K in tournaments later this month, I wanted to watch a few tournament videos to see if I can pick up anything. I asked around the cash game forums for training site recommendations for MTT videos and I got none. So I posted in the MTT forums and got told to stop being a moron (the poker forums can be a cruel place for the completely clueless) and use something called a "search" function. Actually, I had done this, but the key words "MTT" and "video" come up so often that I didn't see what I needed right away. Anyway, eventually, I came across a thread that talks about the various training sites.
Tournament poker players are the
mole people of the poker world. The most successful
cash game players in the world are considered the best poker players in the world. The most successful
tournament players in the world (except for Phil Ivey) are generally heralded as donks and luck boxes. The other day, there was a high stakes cash game that revolved around Daniel Negreanu (aka Kid Poker). If any of the other names novice poker viewers would be familiar with (Phil Hellmuth, Gus Hansen, John Juanda, Mike Matusow, etc) come to play cash games, the online high stakes cash game players will come a flocking. Cruel, I know. As they say... You're pro or you're noob. That's life.
So having been a surface dweller all my life (as bad as I am), I did not realize a whole subculture of tournament poker existed. There are multiple tournament forums where they discuss strategy and socialize. Well, I knew they existed, but never really thought about them, because they're mole people!!! and I'm a surface dweller! They even have their own video training sites, most of which I've never heard of before. Ironically, most cash game players want to win tournaments because that's where the huge scores are. Not only are there six to seven figure payouts for first place, if you win a "major" one, you can get enough endorsements to be comfortable for years, if not the rest of your life.
Even tho tournament players as a whole have a bad rep as poker players, there is definitely a skill set involved to become successful. In fact, that skill set is rather complicated and altho cash game players like to consider themselves superior, there are a lot of nuances of tournament strategy that cash gamers miss. The other day, some guy won the two major Sunday tournaments on FT for nearly a quarter million dollars. That can't be just luck. So with FTOPS a week away, I present to you the two best tournament poker training sites:
*
www.pokersavvy.com/plus
*
www.pokerpwnage.com
Honorable mentions to:
*
www.pokerxfactor.com
*
www.themavenvt.com (whenever it gets up and running)
Of course, the general video training sites like CardRunners, Leggo, Bluefire, and Deuces Cracked have some good MTT videos as well.
There's donk money out there for the taking! You just need to train and go get it!
Posts
On point as usual. Mole people... nice.
ReplyDeleteI always love when cash gamers cut on tournament players' poker skill. Then you put the cash gamers in a big mtt and they don't make it 2/3 of the way because the nuance and adjustment needed to properly excel at mtt's is so very different from that needed in cash.
ReplyDeleteNice post, have been enjoying reading here lately quite a bit.
to hammer- the fact of the matter is that tourney players adapt to cash much worse than cash players adapt to tourneys. There is a much much greater amount of variance involved in tournament results, thus it reasonably unlikely that the players with the best results are in fact the best tournament poker players. however the variance in cash (at least online) gets tempered by the law of large averages. thus it is a reasonable assumption that big winners putting in a lot of hands at MSNL+ are in fact great poker players.
ReplyDeleteyes there are some nuances to tournament play that would probably benefit most cash players. however all of that said pretty much every big winning cash players is massively +EV in a tournament setting while many "big" tourney winners are actually -EV when they sit in most MSNL cash games online. deep stacked cash game poker is simply a more complex form of poker, and when you combine that with the fact that many tourney players could be much worse than their results would indicate (due to variance) it's clear why most tourney players are fish in cash games.
tl;dr
cliffs: many tourney winners are actually luck-boxes. thus the majority of strat videos from big tourney winners are not at the same caliber as big cash game winners. and due to the lack of complexity in tournament poker most feature a quality of commentary that you would expect from a micro stakes cash game instructor.