By BadgerPro on September 19th, 2007 (more posts by author)

I was going to write a longer blog today but one of the guys who took 10th in the 5 Card Draw (5CD) tournament that I finished 5th in writes over at flopturnriver and did a quick interview about the tournament with me last night so I'll just link to that so I don't have to repeat most of the stuff. Interview.

My interview is under the WCOOP Event #2 summary and if you scroll down below my interview there is an interview of the guy who interviewed me (if that's not too confusing to follow). This was my first time being interviewed by anyone in about my play or tournament experience so feel free to let me know how you think I came off.

As I said in the interview this was my first time playing 5CD and it was a really good experience to see how well I could do at a game I'd never played by just relying on my tournament poker skills. It's really made me think about my current approach to the game and how my current thought process is while playing. Toward the end of the 5CD tournament I felt like I was 'in control' of any table I was at. Not necessarily that I was the 'table captain' but that I had a great feel for the flow of play at the table. Since I didn't know correct 5CD strategy that well I was relying on everything else I knew about poker to carry me through.

If the table was playing loose I'd sit back and wait for my big hands and get paid off. When they started to play tight I'd open up my raising range and take the blinds. I had a great sense of what others thought of my table image. After scanning through the interview of the guy who took 10th he mentioned only drawing one card when you held a hand like AJJxx, trips, two pair, and a drawing hand since it will disguise what you actually hold and make it harder to put your opponent on a hand. This was something I was doing occasionally during the tournament but many of the other players weren't doing at all. Because of this it was fairly easy to figure out where I was in a hand a lot of the time. Also many of the players 3 betting range were really easy to figure out and exploit through out the tournament. Most players were calling too loose out of position (OOP) and 3betting too tight and many were never 3bet bluffing.

I'm hoping this experience will really move my tournament game to the next level as it's made me see that I need to rely more on my instincts and reads at the table rather than always playing 'according to the book.' This is probably one of the few bad habits I've picked up from the '2+2 style' of play. I worry too much about playing a hand correctly rather than just playing poker. So over my next few tournaments I'm going to get back to just playing my style of poker and quit concentrating on playing 'correctly.' Not that I'm going to be a crazy lagtard but I'm definitely going to play more by feel rather than the 'is this the most +ev play in this spot' mindset.

Badger Out!

P.S. When I say it's going to be a shorter blog at the beginning a lot of the time I get carried away and that isn't the case but I'm usually too lazy to go back and change the beginning. This one didn't get too long but just a warning for the future. Also, I don't worry about grammar or proofread my blogs so there might be a few errors here and there and a few sentences that don't quite go together the best so please accept my apologizes in advance. ;)