With a full time job, I am only able to play 3-4 tournaments per week; and have settled mostly into ACR medium/large field tournaments ranging from $50 to $200. When I started on ACR, I final tabled 3 tournaments in my first several months (finished first in 1) -- I definitley know this was not sustainable, and was just small sample/variance in my favor.

But now, I'm stuck in a rut where I am either busting near the bubble or min-cashing -- no top 18 finishes for a long while. The real frustrating thing, however, is the pattern I keep getting into: I almost always get into a top position in the early toinament (surpsisingly without taking crazy risks -- just exploiting the weak players and building a stack when I have the goods). Then either mid or mid-late tournament I slowly, but surely, fall back to the middle of the pack. Even when I double up at this point, I still end up falling back to the pack. Eventually, I lose a race and take my small cash/close call. I've noticed this pattern and conciously tried to not get too tight as the SPRs go down/increasing my reshove range, but it hasn't helped.

Given my limited play, there's an argument this pattern, too, is variance. But the pattern is too recurrent, so I'm wondering if anyone has ever suffered a similar pattern and has suggestions, or could otherwise offer a way out.

I had a 250 game downer on an avg bi @ 200$~ this is beyond standard. You’re also probably not as good as you thought you were/are when you had a heater early on. There are some good mtt ers on that site who are studying and playing a lot.
All the resources you need to get better at mtts are out there. If you want to win @ 50-200s you need to study. If you want to play a few mtts a week and donk around then that’s fine but you shouldn’t expect to win in 2021 if you aren’t using pio and aren’t studying

i share this at least once per month it seems

http://www.nsdpoker.com/2011/01/mtt-pros/

Here are a few resources that can help.
Dto poker. Easiest /best mtt training tool IMO. Download it and buy the high roller subscription and start practicing and you will get better. Can almost guarantee you are butchering a lot of post flop spots.
Monker solver. You can buy solved pf ranges for various stack sizes. It’s likely you are leaking in many pf spots.
Pio - 250$ or smth for the advanced version so you can learn about how to play better post flop. Mark a few hands each session and spend an hour analyzing spots that you don’t understand.
Gl

FWIW Bubble I think a lot of your posts are pretty good and demonstrate some good instinct and I think you're overall a very good poster.

That being said--basically what lp16 said except more sternly:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...7&postcount=26
https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...1&postcount=28

You have no right to think you should be extracting EV from these events. Unless:

1. You're a true genius/prodigy at mathematics--not merely good at arithmetic (which isnt really math) but real big-boy math especially logical induction/deduction (I feel like a broken record at this point), IF...THEN statements and computer science (after all, you do know the algorithm underlying poker decisions is computer science, right? Meaning poker is as much a computer science endeavor as anything)

OR

2. You've put in at least a thousand hrs of good training/studying--though the threshold for normal people is likely a lot higher. To give you an idea, I'm personally aiming for 2k hrs of poker activity this year (I also have a full time job, though a very chill work-from-home one, and I also don't have the burdens [ahem, I mean joy] of raising a family). Sadly, I feel like I've only been about 40-50% efficient over the last few years in terms of converting free time to training time--too much weed, too much distraction due to lack of mindfulness, being in bad physical shape with a shitty diet, that kind of stuff; really trying hard to make 2021 as close to 100% efficient as possible basically doubling my productive output this year compared to the last ~2 prior years. My joining the forum more or less coincides with kicking off my poker journey in earnest.

I dont speak to enough poker players to know otherwise but I can't imagine that the pop of top regs--who are the only people actually extracting EV from these events--put in any less effort, after all for many of them this is their job.

And let's be clear: there are no bounds to how good one can be at this game, at least testing those bounds is something that hasn't even been close to achieved yet by anyone.

The good news is, studying is simple in the sense that there is only one valid approach and that's the approach that seeks to maximize your comfort and familiarity with GTO principles and also mentally handling the abstract mathematical objects that are ranges and strategies (which is more akin to a memory game than anything). Anyone who disagrees--well, sorry you're wrong

I disagree with using training tools that others have created because to me it just feels kind of dirty to ship money to another poker player in any other context besides losing a pot, but that's just me--if that highlights an envious streak in me then so be it. I get that most people have significant time constraints that I don't have and for such people--like yourself--I can get behind using training tools like the ones lp16 mentioned but I really believe that the only way to maximize your benefit is to do everything on your own.

If one really wanted to test how good one is at understanding these principles, one would not do it on the felt. What they'd do instead is turn the game into a math test (which it is anyway--I mean a more controlled math test).

They'd take a sufficient sample of randomly generated game trees that are of sufficient complexity (after a lot of testing I've found four bet sizings and three raise sizings to strike the perfect balance), and they'd randomly generate paths through those trees as if they're playing a real hand of poker, and along that path for all players involved they'd endeavor to choose all viable (non-zero frequency) sizings, and assign approximate frequencies to those sizings in aggregate and for at least a subset of combos in each range, and they'd use precisely those GTO principles and only those GTO principles to do it. Other types of questions they can ask to mix things up are things like "What is IP's highest EV bluff?" or "What is OOP's highest EV catcher" or "which combo in IP's range is most heavily subject to distribution effects" or "What happens if the SPR is decreased by half ceteris paribus" et al--there's a million different questions one could ask, the only limit is one's imagination. They may also give themselves a time constraint like 30sec per street plus a timebank. They'd assign points based on how close their deductions are to the actual strategy. Miss a sizing? Get some frequencies wrong, etc? Then your answers are not 100% correct.

Such a person would reinforce their learning by doing some writing about the spot every time they err--again, using only GTO principles to explain what happened and where they went wrong. This means adhering to the vocabulary and syntax (remember, you're engaging in computer science here) that are unique to explaining those GTO principles. To be fair--and this is another reason why I strongly feel that you should do everything on your own--the corpus of poker knowledge still hasn't evolved to where this vocab and syntax are standardized; that alone makes the existing set of tools available (notwithstanding the solver, which is a tool that stands entirely on it's own in terms of importance and usefulness) insufficient to really take your game to the next level.

Guarantee you score no higher than 40% on such a test, my guess is you'd score a lot lower. In other words, more often than not you're probably leaking at least some EV due to not understanding at least some aspect of what's actually going on at a deep, abstract level.

In any case, this hypothetical person would not be deterred if it took him 2k hours just to complete the induction part of the loop--meaning the part where he familiarizes himself with these GTO principles and with doing math with abstract objects like ranges and strategies--to the level of unconscious competence. So forgetting even about the deductive side of things (which is what that hypothetical math test is ultimately testing), a solid few thousand hours just to really truly understand the ultimately very simple set of GTO principles that control strategy formation.

I have pre-run trees for a massive amount of spots SRP,3bp,4bp,HU,BvB, amd Limped pots; I use a representative subset of 25 flops for each spot; and I have spots for effective stacks from 10bb to 100bb-- a few thousand trees in total from which I draw samples when I drill myself during a training session.

I'd say at this point on any random tree and without time constraints I'm about 80-90% likely to make no meaningful mistakes--and it's taken me over 2k hours of training to get to that point and I still don't feel like I'm great yet.

Of course none of this deals with playing exploitatively, which is a whole different beast.

Poker really just is that complicated.

IDK if any of this makes you feel better or worse--but I get the sense that above all you want to be realistic and this is the reality. I promise you none of this is outside the scope of what you asked.

Everyone, these are very excellent and thoughtful responses. And I thank you. I wish I could take Eggs's advice and just study poker a lot. But, alas, I have a fulltime job, a wife, and two kids ... so it just can't happen. So I will study while I can -- I'm on my third reading of Modern Poker Theory (luckily I work a job where I'm able to squeeze in some reading). As for the tools/resources, I'm not sure I'm able to play enough to invest in some of the more expensive items and make that purchase be +$Ev, but I'm researching some of the lower cost ones.

Stop reading outdated poker books and download the dto app

Modern Poker Theory is outdated already? It's a 2019 book that is all about GTO play with tons of chart, math and theory.

Nevertheless, I have downloaded DTO and am using, so thanks.

Lol I honestly have no idea about the book I was just talking ****

And you better be making at least half a million a year from poker spending this much time studying cuz if you put that kind of effort into a normal career you’d be making some cake

The way out is thru

OP, in a perfect world we would all have a spare 2000 hours to spend on our hobbies, but in reality 2000 hours equals 40 hours a week for a year. Or, figuring about 2 hours of uninterrupted leisure time a day, you could devote ALL of your spare time, 7 days a week, for 3 years. Sounds like fun, right?

But that is not your life, or mine. In that sense, developing poker skills to the highest level is like maintaining peak physical fitness: only a select few can devote the energy necessary to keep it going over an extended period of time. In the case of fitness, only Athletes, Actors and Convicts have the time to keep it up. For the rest of us, we can work it hard and get there, but we cannot stay there for long. We just don't have the time.

And Poker is the same. Either you are a professional, or you are some misanthrope who has no life beyond his crappy day job, who is so devoted to Poker that he got rid of his Cat because petting it was taking away time from the game, or you are like the rest of us: a guy who is good at games, and probably better at math than the average, who has had some success at poker and feels that something better is somewhere very near by, yet just beyond his reach. Believe me when I tell you that many here feel exactly that way. We would love to be that guy who can ignore all the noise and remain focused on Poker. But in reality what we need is a quick fix. Here are my suggestions for that fix:

Do not spend a lot of time on Game Theory. Many people have focused on Game theory as a short cut to Poker Success. But it has some flaws as a practical approach to tournament poker, not the least of which is that the more participants there are in the game, the harder it is to apply. In order for game theory to function, you must assume that all participants in the game will act rationally and will make decisions that will improve their chances of success. When was the last time you saw that happen at a poker table. The truth is that most of us lack the inherent ability and brain power to be able to apply game theory in real time anyway, so unless you are one of those cheaters, er sorry PLAYERS that runs all the software in the world to help him play the game you should just put GTO aside and move on.

In any online tournament of note you will be playing against any number of cyborgs, guys who will not play without computer enhancements and calculators and trackers. IMO you are much better off playing an exploitive style against those guys than you are attempting GTO. And one way of doing that is shifting gears. I have three main gears which I use in every tournament. I think of them as Daniel, Phil, and Gus. (the names of the gears might give you a clue as to when I developed this approach.) When I am in Daniel mode, that means I am playing small ball, opening a lot of pots, making calls in position with hands like suited connectors, etc. If I am playing Phil that means I am nitting it up, playing only power hands in position. If I am in Gus mode that means I am playing almost ATC aggressively from almost any position. I spend most of my time in Daniel mode, but I make an effort to regularly switch into Phil mode or Gus mode as circumstances warrant so as to confuse the issue.

Here is the fix YOU need. Short Stack Play. Let me repeat that: SHORT STACK PLAY. As I have said in other posts, this is where the rubber meets the road in tournament poker. The player you describe yourself to be is exactly the player who needs to focus on this issue. I suggest that for the next few days or weeks or whatever, you take the time you would spend playing Poker and use it to study short stack poker, because it is a very different game when the average stack is 30 BB or less than it is when everyone is 100 BB deep, like a cash game. As some poker writer observed decades ago, a different type of player succeeds at tournament poker than does at cash games. Look at a guy like Leatherass, who claims to be the biggest winner of all time at NL1000. Yet his Hendon Mob page shows less than 30k in live tournament winnings. Even I have more than that. He has launched endless attacks on the Helmuth style of play, and even titled his book KILL PHIL. And no doubt he would crush Phil at NL1000. But how would he fare against Phil if they both had only 25 BB at the final table of a big tournament. That is the question.

Anyway Blah blah blah work on your short stack play. Good Luck.

I recommend focusing on playing mtts with smaller field sizes if you can. Also 3-4 tournies a week is extremely low volume. You could do that for a year and just be in a downswing for the whole year if you don’t run well in spots which can be very annoying.

Ex: I’ve been averaging a $50-10 abi on sundays on acr where I shot take field sizes to at are too big and buyins that are too big and I’ve run poorly in spots. I lost QQ-1010 with 30 left in a $200 where the guy that beat me won the tourny for $30k+ and I got 1k for a 30th place finish. Big field tournament play can be very gross. I made a run to finish 50th in a $55 8k player field mtt- might have got $500 when 40-50k up top. It’s really hard to explain how hard and how lucky you have to be to win very big field mtts.

Also, is it bad not to be studying pio at a say $50-100 buyin range? I don’t study pio, I kinda suck in that regard. I’ve stopped playing bc my downswing lately has been gross but I’m only playing sundays and maybe 10-15 mtts a day. As always, it’s so annoying to make a run in say a $100-200 mtt for me and to bust late and get a pittance of a few buy ins back. I’m no wizard though and def a step behind the top players bc I don’t study pio and don’t understand the game at a super high level like soul crushers.

This is one of the dumbest posts that's ever been made here, congrats!

I make six figs and I put in like 2hrs of work a day at my job working from home, and I technically have a full time 9-5 white collar job. My sense of balance between hard work at my career and my compensation is all out of whack. And so is my sense of duty/self-worth that's derived from my compensation, my possessions, and my net worth all of which are more than enough to make me very satisfied with the thread of fate that's been spun for me.

I happen to just like studying abstract math and I like competitions and so poker naturally fits the bill for now. I like working towards a tangible goal and I like being rigid in my approach to doing that and poker fits that bill too and it makes me delighted to see so many (all?) other poker players be either so lazy or so conceited or so indifferent or all of the above when they ignore the role that hard work and discipline play in maximizing your potential.

I'd rather work thousands of hours at poker and never make a dime then work thousands of hours for a firm owned by other people and make bank. I'd feel equally accomplished if I finished the real analysis and abstract algebra studying that I've been wanting to do a for a while, which I've been putting off in lieu of training for poker, and I promise you that no one is gonna pay me to study that math.

Money is not my motivating factor in anything I do, ever.

Please feel free to refute any point that I made.

Are you saying that the average guy has the time to maintain a professional athlete level of physical fitness?

Are you saying that the average recreational player is capable of making useful GTO style calculations in real time without computer assistance?

Are you saying that the effectiveness of game theory does not diminish when you add additional players? are you saying that game theory functions at an optimal level in environments awash in imperfect information?

Are you saying that regularly altering your play ie "shifting gears" is not an effective strategy to disguise the strength of your range?

Are you saying that a guy who on the regular stacks up chips in the early stages, yet seems to always lose them all in the middle stages and bust at or near the bubble, does not need to work on short stack play?

Are you saying that the style Leatherass has used to dominate NL1000 would be an ideal approach to use during short stack play in a tournament? are you saying that Leatherass' style is better for tournament play than is Hellmuth's?

Are you saying that exploitive play is not an acceptable approach to modern tournament poker?

Are you saying that if you do not have a spare 2000 hours to devote to poker then you don't deserve to have even small successes?

Or don't bother to respond at all. You have made it clear that you are only concerned with your software and math, as you have almost singlehandedly driven this forum into a place to discuss what your huds and solvers say, and away from the discussion of how to go about actually winning at tournament poker. And I guess I have made it pretty clear that I have little respect for cyborgs like yourself who cannot handle poker without running your trackers and huds and solvers.

One thing I am curious about, though. Did you feel the need to demean and insult me because you actually did give your Cat away?

In the end money is much more useful than your personal achievements that make you happy but have no value outside of your mind. Money can make your living situation more comfortable, provide security to loved ones, allow you to enjoy places you've never been before, help out those in need, etc. Achieving in solving equations and random math problems is similar to masturbation - if anything I think jerking off might be better.

Leatherass was one of the weaker regs in the 200/400/1k blitz pool on acr imo. Idk whether that’s here nor there though lol

i dont care about traveling, and i dont have dependents, and i most certainly dont carr about possessions and i make plenty of money anyway to do/have all those things and much more so I mean you can continue striving for money and ill continue striving for personal achievements. If thats your attitude then theres a fundamental disconnect between what you believe and what i believe that will never be reconciled.

Its such a shame that stoicism and minimalism are considered strange philosophies. Its actually kind of sick and sad

Cats are for losers, I like dogs and birds

Im not saying any of these things, but I AM saying you dont actually know anything about game theory and in light of that, you coming in here telling OP literally the opposite of what he should be hearing is actually a lot more brash then me calling you post stupid.

So what you are saying is that you do not disagree with any single point I made in my post, yet somehow it is the dumbest post on 2plus2. Okay.

OP says he is a recreational player with a full time job and two kids who has little time to devote to the game beyond what he spends actually playing. OP asks a pretty simple question. He does well when the stacks are deep and all of the fools are still around, yet he falters as the field and the average stack size reduces. What can he do to fix that?

Your response was to tell him quote "You have no right to think you should be extracting EV from these events." My response was to advise him to work on his short stack play. It is debatable which response will serve him better.

I do have to ask you a question. Do you actually play tournament poker? or is it just an academic exercise for you, a math problem that you are working on with your piosolver? Asking for a friend.

I can sympathize because the amount variance in large MTTs is really insane. There isn't much you can do except put in more volume (not an option for you) and your bankroll might be available spending money or you could lower the stakes you play. But who wants to to play $10 MTT in their spare time when they work a full time job?

You could also consider a swap or trade with a friend. You could agree to swap 10% equity in a tournament with someone (or some amount that might help reduce variance).

What you have described is what has been going on for me in $400+ Live tournaments for a while.

I believe that I do well at the start because there are still bad players and some players who are taking wild risks to double up early. But it hasn't always been that way so I know I have been getting better.

The failure then to go deep is a combination of factors. The skill level of the remaining players increases exponentially. The bigger problem though is the number of weaker players decreases dramatically. And inevitably if I am not the chip leader or close (which is rare for me) I will be getting it in usually several times.

I have taken some looks analytically of these all-ins (and mostly all-ins), and when I am running bad it is frustrating. But in the end It will require winning a flip or two and holding on in 70% to 80% situations. In most tournaments that means that even if I am consistently getting it in good, I will be making a deep run infrequently. When I look at the tournaments I have won or come close to winning, only once did I not have to get it all-in. In the others I would estimate my chances of surviving to win based on my all-ins at about 5% to 15%. So without playing in a ton of tournaments at my current skill level it makes sense that I run deep infrequently.

From a skill set perspective there is clearly much I can improve on. I have increased my 3-bet bluffing considerably. I have increased my bluffing in general as well. And I am calling down to pick off bluffs more as well (either in situations where a bluff seems likely or against a player who tends to overbluff). This last helps to prevent "over-bluffing" at the table against me IMO even if I lose by calling light.

I read all of the posts here and it has helped me enormously. This includes understanding bet sizing, GTO, and various options in tough situations.

As opposed to Egg's opinion that the only way to become great is to go down the solver path, I have been taking time to study tells. This is probably one of the areas I can improve radically (I come from an alcoholic family where at a very young age I could tell my father's mood by the way his key sounded in the lock before he came in the house). In one book Phil Helmuth says that reading people is about 70% of success and analytics about 30%.

I will let you know how it turns out. Like you I do not play frequently enough. I live 2 hours from the nearest casino and only play live (so its been over a year since I've played). I have also been a stay at home dad and work from home as well - so I have been limited to mostly weekends and trips to Vegas.

My guess is that you will win some tournaments (or at least come very close) over time. Your posts are well reasoned and given enough opportunities your skill will prevail.

Sigh.

Look, what is happening to OP is variance and he's trying to find patterns from a small sample size when there are probably none. I suspect those $200 ACR tournies aren't that hard, but they probably aren't easy either, so if you are marginal winner, it will take a while to materialize your expectation.

Poker is a game in which the immediate feedback you get is divorced from the quality of your decision making. I don't know how you can maintain your zen trying to play good poker 2 tournaments at a time, possibly not getting a result for a couple of years, but that's what you have to do. While obviously you could win your next tourney, it can take 2k-3k tournaments to win, that's the way it goes sometimes and that's what you have to make peace with.

Read the Acevedo book. it's a good one, study when you have free time, that's all you can do. Also remember, you are one of the lucky ones. Your livelihood doesn't depend on winning poker tournaments.

I’ve said this many times

Unless you’ve already made enough $ to live comfortably and poker for some reason becomes a grail

And I get that too