Whenever I play in a tournament I don't start out with the goal of winning. Of course winning would be nice but I think it's too much pressure to have such a huge goal when there are a couple thousand people I have to beat to achieve it. I prefer to start out with something a little smaller, like making it to the first break (for my non-poker playing readers, the first break is usually at the 55-60 minute mark). It shouldn't be that difficult to do even when the cards aren't falling my way but today I finished 5 minutes short of that goal and I think I figured out why.
I was again playing in the $1 tourney over at Paradise (every day at 1pm pacific time) and the field was around 1600. I was sitting at a fairly passive table with very little raising going on and I let myself get caught up in the boredom. While I should have been raising pre-flop with anything marginal or above, in an attempt to steal some pots, I found myself limping in only to fold when I didn't hit anything. I just didn't have it in me to be aggressive at this table. I ended up winning a total of one hand for the entire time I played and lost a good part of my stack on the one hand I attempted to be aggressive on. I finally got blinded out when a fourth diamond came on the river to give seat 1 a Q high flush (the hand was mine until that damn diamond showed up). Getting caught up in the personality of the table threw me off my game and, while I had a prime opportunity to work on being more aggressive, I slowly faded into 737th place. This leads me to the question of the week:
Is there any hope for someone who is not aggressive by nature to develop aggression at the poker table?
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