Eric Rizen Lynch

Ask Rizen - not so special Sat update

Just a quick update on a few things then on to 'Ask Rizen'. First off, thanks for all the supportive responses on my last post. I will assure everyone that it was not just one person that prompted the post, or I would have handled that individually rather than on the blog. It wasn't a ton of people, but it was enough I wanted to address it.

On the poker front, things are going well. I won the UB $120 bounty tournament a few days ago, which was nice. I've had some nice cashes this month but no first place finishes, so closing one out always feels nice. I've switched my schedule around a bit. I've started playing only about 4 MTTs a night and then spending the rest of the time playing cash games. I've been doing well enough in cash that aside from the biggest nightly tournaments it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense for me to be playing the smaller MTTs. I've also taken a step back to 3/6 cash for a while from 5/10 to tighten up my game a little. Last Sunday I felt like I was making some spewy moves and not playing my best in general. At 5/10+ there is a lot more meta game stuff going on as well as a lot more tough decisions, so whenever I feel like I'm starting to make mistakes I drop down to 3/6 for a bit where you can play a bit more straightforward and work on fixing leaks.

Someone was nice enough to ask about my diet/exercise yesterday via e-mail. I forgot I hadn't mentioned anything on here for a while. Things are going well on that front and I've lost 16 lbs since I got back from Las Vegas. I've been sick this last week and with the travel I've done this month I've gotten a bit out of my regular exercise routine but until about 2 weeks ago I was doing real well, and I'm enjoying it enough and feeling enough better because of it I anticipate I'll get right back on schedule as soon as I get over this cold/flu bug I've got.

On to the questions:

Q: Can u discuss more about big stack play. How do u play a big stack effectively in different stages of the tournament?

A: People have a lot of misconceptions about big stack play. The advantage of the big stack is you have a lot more tools available to you to accumulate chips. Often this means splashing around in more speculative spots and (in the mid/later stages) using your stack's ability to threaten other people's tournament lives to pick up chips. What it isn't though is a license to just throw chips around willy nilly and spew all over the place. Lots of players early on in their poker careers think if they get a big stack they HAVE to just dominate their table and raise every pot. That can be a part of a big stack strategy when the table isn't playing back at you but generally, preserving your chip stack is just as important (perhaps moreso) as chipping up.

Q: From what you have said I assume you play a multiplude of MTTs on Sundays with some being more important then others. Do you use a dual monitor set up? Could you explain your thought process about you A and B and maybe even C and D priority’s?

A: I do use a dual monitor setup. I have 2 21" Dell widescreens I use while I play. I play up to 6 tables at a time but rarely any more than that. I really don't feel my play drops off that much from playing 1 table to playing 6, but obviously I'm not getting all the reads I normally get. As far as prioritizing, I usually pay the most attention to whatever tournament I'm the deepest in, as usually that's the tournament where paying the most attention will reap the biggest rewards.

For what it's worth, I gradually worked up to 6 tables. I played one table for a very long time, then added a second and struggled a bit until I got used to it and so on until I eventually could handle 6. I used to play 8 for a while, but I felt going form 6 to 8 had a significant drop off in my game.

Q: What do you think are the biggest mistakes that you make in tournament?

A: That I personally make? I'd like to think I don't make a whole lot of mistakes anymore, but sometimes I'm a bit stubborn in the earlier stages of tournaments. Generally early in tournaments that are deeper stacked you're better off making small mistakes by folding in marginal spots than making bigger mistakes by making hero calls to pick off bluffs or whatever. As an example I had KK on a 994 board in the first level of a tournament the other day. I should really never go broke on that board unless a K hits, but I stubbornly held onto the hand. Later in tournaments sometimes I keep my foot on the accelerator a bit too long and don't know when to back off. I'd always much rather err on the side of aggression though.

Q: I was hoping you could talk about what you know about how a professional player will sponsor or bankroll a person that is just getting started.  I have always wondered how this comes to happen.  When you watch the tournaments on TV they will sometimes show a pro in the stands and say that they are a mentor to one of the players.  Do the pro’s find rough talent while in cash games or tourneys that they have played against someone and see promise?  Do novice players pay a pro for personal tutoring?  Does the pro bankroll a player and receive a cut of winnings?  Maybe a combination of all the above?

A: I get asked this one a lot, but really I honestly don't know. I was never sponsored or mentored, and I've never really sponsored or mentored anyone myself. I have lots of friends who have improved my game and hopefully I've done likewise, but it's always been more of a relationship of equals and not really a mentor/protege type relationship. I would assume that most of these relationships either happen because the two are friends away from the poker tables as well, or in some cases more enterprising poker players see these sorts of relationships as 'business ventures' and often the mentoring/sponsoring comes in exchange for some portion of the player's profits. I'm in a bit of a unique situation as a player in that I just don't have a whole lot of free time when I'm not actually playing, and prefer to spend it with my family, so it's nothing I've really had a whole lot of interest in exploring.

-Rizen