The WPT is coming to the Seminole Hard Rock Casino here in Tampa and their $300k GTD Deep Stack main event is an $1100 buy-in. I'm considering playing in it for the learning experience and I think it could be a fun introduction to live tournaments as thats where I want to put my focus. I'm not a professional and wouldn't consider myself anywhere close, but I've just a few days ago returned to poker online and have only played a few medium stakes tournaments and am already up enough to cover the buy-in (biggest cash was at the final table for $400 in a $10 buy-in $4k GTD). I know I'm not great but I somehow feel like I know what I'm doing when I play tournaments, either that or just getting lucky a lot... I know there is a lot of variance in tournaments and this doesn't mean I'm good (at all), but I feel like I should give this tournament a try anyway. I used to grind cash games but I don't find them nearly as fun as tournaments so I really want to get good at tourneys this time around, and since it's not often that the WPT comes to town, I figure it would be fun.

What advice would you give someone who has two weeks to prepare for their first big live tournament and could be considered a "reg"? It will be my first live game ever (besides playing with friends). I know all of the basics about texas holdem and tournaments (what to do with certain stack sizes, what to do in certain stages of the tournament, how to tell when people are bluffing, stealing, 3 betting, cbetting, shove/fold) but I feel like playing online tournaments is not a good way to prepare for this caliber of live game as online play differs so much, especially at the lower stakes, and I would be preparing myself for the wrong type of game. There's hardly a chance to put anyone on hand ranges or to use pot odds at those stakes online because everyone just plays their own game and doesn't care about pot odds, so you can't predict them. I'm thinking just reading strategy is probably what I should be focusing on, not playing online tournaments where the play is going to be very different from live. I think my weakest point is putting people on ranges and calculating pot odds on the spot when facing tough decisions so I should probably focus on those before going into a big live tournament. What do we think? Thanks! I'm not necessarily expecting to cash, but at the same time I (probably naively) think that I could do well in it based on how deep I've been running in every one of these online tournaments I've been playing.

Edit: event schedule: https://www.shrtpoker.com/wp-content...Event_1100.pdf