Hello everyone

So I got invited to my first in person tournament today and as it's my first tournament ever I read a beginners guide to prepare.

One of the things my beginner guide said to do was to go all in if i had AA, KK, QQ, or AK preflop.

So i did that twice with AK and was beaten twice with kings and that resulted in me being eliminated from the tournament.

My question is did the book give me bad advice or did I do something wrong?

Thank you

Need better hand histories. AK only beats KK 30%.

Ok well to be more specific the book said to do the following which I followed to the letter as a beginner.

Go all in with AA, KK, QQ, AK, AQ preflop

And with a pair of 77s to Js try and hit 3 of a kind and if you hit 3 of a kind bet big.

Hand 1 I folded

Hand 2 I got AK and went all in preflop as per the book. I had one caller with KK and he beat me. I had to rebuy at this point.

Hand 3 I got AA and went all in and every folded.

I folded every single hand for the next hour or two as I didn't get any of the starting hands in the book (again remember I'm a total beginner)

After 2 hours if folding i think I only had 15k worth of chips left (starting stack is 35k plus 35k addon ). I got AK and went all in like the book said. I had one caller and he had KK and he knocked me out of the tournament.

I feel really silly as I felt I followed the advice in the book perfectly and folded in a very disciplined way for 2 hours or so.

The AK vs KK is just unlucky. But no you shouldn't be in shove or fold mode till 10-15 big blinds.

And also you need to play way more hands than that. Just look up a starting hand chart based on positions.

First position to act 9 handed a tight range would be like 88+ AK AQ suited AJ KQ AT A5.

If it folds to you on the button (the last position to act before the blinds) you need to massively open up your range. 22+ any ace, lots of suited hands etc.

Middle positions it's somewhere in between and depends on circumstances.

It sounds like whatever you read boiled things down so far and so tight it's gonna be really hard to win.

You need to win/steal the blinds in tournaments to maintain or grow your stack especially if there are antes.

What book did you read that advocated such tight play Sounds like your just beginning I'm not sure what book would be best but I'm sure Dan Harrington book or something like that has to be better than whatever you read. Maybe just watch some poker streams of solid mtt players to get a feel for how they play. At least it might give you an idea where to start.

Please give us the book title. I'd like to see what author states to go all in with AA on the first hand of a tournament with no raises before you. Thx

It isn't clear what the guide actually said - but what you took from it was very bad advice. That could simply be your interpretation of what it said. In general, it is usually correct to be willing to get all-in preflop with those hands (though early in a tournament if someone wants to get all-in preflop, AK isn't as good as it sounds). That doesn't mean that you just immediately go all-in. It all depends on the size of the blinds and how many chips you have. If the blinds are 25/50 and you all have 10,000 chips (200BB), immediately going all-in with any hand is ridiculous. If the blinds are 2500/5000 and you all have about 30,000 chips (6 BB) then you should either go all-in or fold.

If the guide made no comments about bet sizing or different stages of the tournament, it is useless and I'd suggest you just throw it away.

You got good advice. The strategy you used for your level of experience and the effort you put in was the optimal strategy.

Doesn't mean it was a good strategy, just that for what you knew it was the best way to play. If you could spend more time learning and playing then you could arrive at and employ a better strategy. But you didn't. This isn't the strategy guides fault.

I can't remember the exact book, but I do recall at least one tournament book lost someone suggesting a "jam QQ+ and AK pre and fold everything else" for the purposes of a complete beginner who has never played the game before. It's something I recall a long time ago, probably before the Harrington books came out. Yes of course it is highly inefficient and will leave a lot of value on the table, and could clearly be easily improved with very basic methods for handling a short stack, but the point was to keep it as simple as possible for someone who doesn't know what they are doing and at least if they go out it will likely be with a decent holding

Sounds like the "system" Sklansky suggested to someone who was a total beginner at poker and was gifted an entry into the WSOP ME about 25 (or more) years ago.

Quite possibly. I was fairly sure it was in one of the Ciaffone or Cloutier books, but I could believe it was Sklansky

So you recently played a tournament and implemented a strategy, and you can't remember the book you read that gave you that strategy. I'm going to have to say I do not approve of you ever playing a tournament again

First off, this is a ridiculously snarky comment. If a person didn't remember the name of a book, big deal - that should not disqualify them from learning from the experience and trying again. Regardless of that, why would you think that anyone would give a rat's ass about having your approval. But secondly, and more importantly, your comment shows that you don't really have good reading comprehension skills. OP recently played a tournament and lost. Another poster is the one who can't remember the name of a particular book - NOT necessarily the book that OP used.

Yup. I remember Sklansky wanted to bet he could get someone to cash the main if they followed similar advice. I want to say it was a woman, like Brandi but she knew how to play cards (not well) so that must be off. It was 15+ years ago

Beginner: throw that book away and just read Harrington on holdem or super system 2

At your level of understanding you really should just go online and play some play money games and tournaments. Maybe even some freerolls. The first tournament I played in was a freeroll on Paradise poker. “freerolls” are also “play money” tournaments in the sense that they are free, but unlike regular play money tournaments you can win real prizes.
Over time your feel for the game will improve allowing you to absorb deeper strategies later.

I didn’t win that freeroll and understand your dissapointment. Even the best players in the world don’t win prizes in 70-80 percent of the tournaments they enter. So, it wasn’t a disastrous result. It was an average one. This is why you shouldnt play in tournaments you can’t afford!
In many tournament situations going all in with AK is a good play. Even in many situations where it isn’t the optimal play it’s still usually a reasonable and understandable one.