Tournament Advice please

[LadyLuck]

Hello everyone, this is my first post though I have 'lurked' for a little while now. I've just recently begun playing online Poker - before this my experience was limited to playing against family and friends so I'm really a newbie. I have found that in roughly 3/4 tournaments (the baby ones) I'm able to be placed either 2nd or 3rd, which is good because it means I at least get my money back, but I was wondering if anyone had any strategies or advice for getting a better placing. What tends to happen is that I'll bet conservatively - and often get whittled down by blind bets and bad hands but win enough to stay in, though when it gets close I'm easily bullied by those with a lot of chips so that I'm forced eventually to go all in on a not so good hand. I suppose it really just comes down to experience and learning to read others better, but I just wondered if anyone had any advice, as from what I've read so far you all seem to know what you're talking about :) Cheers

[BillyHills]

Re: Tournament Advice please Hi LadyLuck, welcome on board, in answer to your question which is a very familiar one and one many of us have sought a solution at some time, is simply by playing more and more and watching and learning from your mistakes and noticing why the players against you are more successful? Its quite common in a STT that most players play as you do, begin playing very tight in hope to get to the 'cash' stages, unfortunately the usual scenario is that after getting there you have few chips in which to play aggressively to actually go on and win the thing. The solution is obviously to be more aggressive earlier on, you need to play more marginal hands when there is 5/6 players left and try to turn the situation on its head so you become the aggressor, especially against the small chips. Yes sure your taking a chance of going out earlier and not reaching the prize money but you dont win any tournaments without risk! I had problems when playing 'heads up', i found it very difficult for a while and was getting overrun by aggressive play. You have to realise a marginal hand with 9 opponents becomes a very good hand with only one opponent, and with the blinds so big, calling is usually a poor play. Its only experience that teaches you this. Jezz wrote a superb reply to Northern Red about something similar in Multi's, take a look at that. I'm no expert and i'm sure someone will add to this thread, but glad you made it to our forum and please keep posting. You may even like to enter our tournament. Cheers BH.