Eric Rizen Lynch

A tale of two players

Well, after my long post on maintaining a consistently high level of play yesterday, I waited almost exactly 12 hrs to break my own rule. I played in about 8 tournaments last night, including the aforementioned Pocket 5s open. There were more tournaments I wanted to play in last night than I had desktop real estate to have open, so I did something I don't normally do. Rather than playing my 'A' game the first hour in my early tournaments, I played aggressively and tried to build some chips up. I figured I'd either be in great shape in those tournaments or I'd bust out early and could open up the other ones I wanted to play in.

It wasn't a particularly good idea. Instead of picking 5-6 tournaments and playing my best game I played 8 tournaments, 4 of which I didn't play my best in and then some later tournaments where I played my best game. Was a huge mistake. I busted out of the Pocket 5s open on a horrible play, and my play in the Stars 150+12 was super erratic. I did end up cashing in the UB 100+9 for a reasonable payday, but all in all it was a losing night.

I truly believe that to take it to the next level as a poker player you need to be able to play all styles of poker well (loose, tight, aggressive, conservative, etc) so you can always switch to the appropriate gear for the table and time in the tournament, but I took what I knew was a sub-optimal strategy for the sake of trying to fit in a few extra tournaments. I'm really going to go back to focusing on playing my solid 'A' game all night tonight, and if it means I stick to fewer tournaments then I'm just going to have to pick a few to sit out of.

In short, do as I say not as I do :) Hopefully I can get this behind me and maintain a high level of play this weekend.

-Rizen