Q&A #28: How Do They Do It?

how do i enter into a WPT event and when is the next one? What strategies should I employ in my first live tournament?

One of the earlier questions about people always making the final table… I was one of those people for about 120 sit and gos. It didn’t matter if there were six people or 5000. For about 120 tournaments I nearly always finished in the money. I thought I was the poker jedi master. I had the ’shark’ rating on sharkscope with a ‘hot’ streak rating. I had an ROI of about 40%. It got to the point where I was actually getting bored of making the bubble. To be honest, when I was running hot, I had a never ending stream of preflop hands like high pocket pairs, AK, AQ, AJ, and I hit the flop all day long.

Then, the unthinkable happened… For the next 120 tourneys, I rarely finished in the money and if I did, it was just barely. My rating and ROI plummetted. I tried to think about what changed and basically I was running cold as hell. I kept a record for a while. I was getting preflop pairs far less than the expected 1/16. I had a never ending run of seven ducks and jack fives. I almost never hit the flop. My aces cracked to people who pushed me all in pre with jack nine off suit. Any time I did actually flop a very good hand, some donkey would call with gutshot str8 and hit. If there was a card on the river that could crack my hand, no matter how much I bet someone would call and suck out. I also seemed to lose about 95% of the time in all-in preflop horse races when I had 2:1 or even 4:1 preflop odds. In short, I couldn’t win a horse race to save my life.

Anyway, the cold streak has turned around and now I am running luke warm. I definitely agree that there are hot and cold streaks in poker. I still have to work on a few things. My biggest weakness is playing at table where there are one or more maniacs who over bet after the flop out of position or preflop raise ahead of me with hands like ace rags or pocket threes late game. Any advice on how to play at a table with people who donkey bet their hands?