Before you read this, please read Part 1 of this series by clicking here.  

Reinventing my game.

Setting the goal of wanting to be a better tournament player was the single best thing I ever did for my game. I no longer had to worry about individual sessions or earning a certain quota for the week. I felt the pressure slip away almost immediately, and was revitalized. 

I spent some time devising a game plan, writing down areas of my game that I knew needed work. The first and most important was: The cards: what to play, and when. 

I knew, of course, in general theory which cards I should be playing, but that didn’t mean I always followed it. As I mentioned earlier, I was having a hard time laying down big hands, and either overvalued or undervalued everything else. Basically, I had no structure. To this point in time, I was an extremely loose/aggressive player, probably seeing an average of 30-40% of all flops. I knew I needed to tighten up, but I wasn’t really sure how. 

I started watching tournaments from beginning to end to see how others played, but it was frustrating and my attention waned. I knew I had to be somewhat involved in the game if I were to maintain any focus, so this is what I decided to do: 

Join a $1 tournament, and fold every hand. The only exception I allowed myself was to check in the big blind, but I wasn’t allowed to bet or raise anything. It took me three attempts before I didn’t jump in the game at some point, but I finally managed to fold every hand in a multi-table tournament. Why did I do this? The initial reason was simply that I wanted to learn to let go of any possible hand that was dealt to me. Until that point, I was unable to fold hands such as AQ pre-flop. I would call all-in raises at the beginning of a tournament with pocket queens, only to inevitably get beat by kings or aces – or worse, runner-runners.  

Feeling as though I was on to something, I continued joining $1 tournaments for an entire month. I never played one hand. Over time, getting pocket aces or kings no longer fazed me. I completely shed the sense of urgency to jump into a pot just because I had a playable hand. I no longer felt that terrible sinking feeling of possibly getting blinded out, because, obviously, I already knew that was going to happen. In truth, I stopped feeling anything about my cards. I became emotionless, because it simply didn’t matter what cards I got, they were all just going to be folded. 

What I didn’t expect though, was to learn even more important lessons along the way.

Next: More lessons learned