How to become a winning MTT player in six months (part 1)

PokerPlayer has teamed up with staking site SharkStaking.com to see if a winning MTT coach can turn our micro-grinding staff writer Keir ‘Kezay69’ Mackay into an MTT wrecking ball…

Before meeting online pro and SharkStaking coach Magnus ‘Giffordonian’ Martin, my tournament record was laughable.

Predominantly a low-stakes cash game fish, whenever I played online MTTs in the past I found them too time-consuming and alien to make any real impact. With no final tables, no three-figure scores and only a smattering of career cashes, I knew my mentor had his work cut out.

We arranged to talk on Skype each day and for me to observe as Magnus tackled the daily MTT grind. Prior to our first session, Magnus asked to see my ‘limited’ career stats. The feedback was not good, and within one hour of watching him play online, the sheer magnitude of my poker shortcomings became apparent.

Magnus fired up several MTTs, ranging from $2 to $55 buy-ins and showed me the fundamentals of solid early MTT strategy: no three-betting preflop in the early stages out of position (OOP) or without Queens or better.

No letting an opponent’s mistakes go unnoted. No open limping. And most importantly, no needless bluffing. The only thing that stopped him from notching up some major cashes that night was luck – in one tournament his Aces were outflopped by Jacks in a 70BB pot. Next, it would be my turn…

Week 1 – baby steps

Before my first session, Magnus gave me a few last-minute tips. Firstly, if you’re going to take notes on your opponents, use sites like Official Poker Rankings and copy and paste your opponents’ stats.

If someone has an ROI of -70% with an average buy-in of $2, you can safely assume they’re a fish. He also gave me a guide to bet sizing and how much you should be open-raising, three-betting and flat-calling in the opening levels (see right). Armed with a $200 bankroll, I settled in for my first session while my coach watched on.

Playing poker with someone analysing your every move is intimidating at first. I felt myself tighten up, abandoning my usual aggro-fish style. And as we entered the wee hours, I was miraculously still alive in two tourneys. After narrowly missing the money in one, my staking career had its first highlight – 331st out of 5,000 for $5.20. A ‘wp’ from Magnus is the pat on the back I was looking for.

Week 2 – back down with a thud

The second week was not so promising. I finished 4,201st out of 5,646, 1,202nd out of 2,168 and 1,516th out of 5,000 all in one evening. The sole highlight of the week was a min-cash in the same $2.20 event as before.

I was flying solo this time, and without Magnus watching over me I had unknowingly returned to my bad, loose playing habits of old. At the end of the week, he looked over my hand histories and pointed out some losing plays.

‘I can see you making some small, but avoidable mistakes,’ said Magnus. ‘For instance, raising a limper OOP with A-9o in the early blind levels of a six-max MTT. You also showed a tendency to play passively in blind vs blind situations.

You checked behind turn and river with a six in your hand on an 8-4-8-6-8 board. A river bet may well get paid off by Ace or even King-high here, and would almost certainly be called if the villain had a four.’

After my grilling I increased the daily MTT quota to six, ignoring my girlfriend’s continued requests for quality time in favour of nights alone with the laptop.

I got off to a flyer – Queens busted by Kings in a $5 turbo for 4,975th place – and the rest of the evening followed a similar pattern.

Just when my luck looked like it couldn’t get any worse, I shoved over the top of a maniac with A-K on an 8-6-2 board only to see him tank-call with J-7 and turn, you guessed it, a Jack. ‘I was tilting,’ the player told me afterwards. That makes two of us.

And then, a breakthrough. At 3am one night I finished 83rd in an $8 event for a whopping $25. An hour later I ran deep in a 5,000+ event to somehow record a profit for the week. I felt like waking my girlfriend up to celebrate (bad idea).

Week 3 – moving forward

My game is improving, and despite only one deep run since my $8 cash – 154th in an $11 event for $30 – I’m consistently lasting longer in daily MTTs. But one thing Magnus has noticed in our post-session analysis is a weakness under the gun, especially when short-stacked.

In one instance, I raised to 2.2x with A♥-Q♣, leaving 11BB behind, and although I won the pot Magnus was quick to tell me that I should have shoved. ‘You’re not going to raise-fold in that spot, so get it in and hope you double up or take the blinds.’ Later in the same session, I put out a similar bet with A♣-J♥ UTG+1 before being told, ‘Just shove it! You’ve got 15BB effective and you can’t raise-fold if someone comes over the top’.

By this stage I’m talking to Magnus more than my own family and we’ve settled into a weekly routine of sweat sessions, hand analysis and daily chats on Skype. And even though my game has changed considerably and Magnus is ‘confident’ that I have a sound grasp of the fundamentals, there’s still a long way to go.

The rest of the week is filled with a few min-cashes and plenty of near misses. But as I begin to wrap up the first part of this series, I bink a SCOOP Main Event seat worth $109. Who knows? Maybe this time next month I’ll really have something to shout about…