"Tight is Right"

This is a concept i learned when i first started playing poker on the $5 sngs at PokerStars in 2005. It struck me while playing the other day that this simple concept is still the most basic, tried and true method of winning at sngs and mtts.

My Bankroll has been steadily increasing and i believe that its possible for me to have my best month of my poker career to date if things continue at this pace. I've been following the "Tight is Right" strategy. Which is basically playing extremely Tight early, only playing premium hands. So simple really. Its amazing how far we stray from this strategy when it consistantly brings home the bacon. Using this strategy I've been able to regularly get deep in the 90 man KO Sngs on Fulltilt and have had some success with it in the low buy-in MTTs.

Poker is easy! It really is. We like to focus on our opponents, trying to out play them or counter what they are doing. But for the most part our opponents are irrelavant. First we need to conquer ourselves. Most of the time i bust out of a tourny its because of a bad play i've made... I can think of numerous examples but i won't bore you. What it comes down to is making the right decisions over and over again.

If you only play premium hands you increase your chance of winning exponentially.

"But i won't get action" - You'd be supprise at how few opponents at the micro $0-$20pay attention to what you're doing. sure if you raise your AA in EP you might not get any action but you will still see more action vs weaker hands than you probably should.

"I will be easily Exploitable" - Again this assumes that opponents are paying attention and if they are, are capable of exploiting what they observe. From my experience this is very rarely the case.

"The loose aggressive gets more action" - True, but it is a much more demanding style of play and its very easy to play it badly.

Try it next time you play;

Don't limp... ever.
Play only premium hands..... for a raise.
Mind the gap - EP raise and you have AT/AJ... fold.
Never slow play one pair hands.... eg AA, KK
Play extremely tight out of position - you're in bb/sb vs a min raise with K5s... fold.

Remember you cannot win a tournament in one hand but you can surely lose it. TIGHT IS RIGHT!

gl

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