Poker is not about chips stacks, position, or cards. It is not about having the guts to push your chips in with nothing. Forget about tournament stages, M-zones, EV, and everything else I taught you in the basic strategy. All of that matters, but it is not what is most important. Howard Lederer is fond of saying, “Poker is a game of incomplete information.” Poker is about making solid decisions in a given situation based on the information that you have been able to extract. Extracting information so you can make solid decisions is what is most important. And in order to do so, you must develop a clear understanding of your opponents. Player profiling is the first step.
Winner or Loser?
During the first few minutes of a sit ‘n go tournament you want to focus on identifying the winners and the losers at the table. By winners and losers I am referring to a players’ history of making the money. This is important because winning players are winning for a reason—they are playing in a way that allows them to get to the money at a higher frequency than losers. However, the strategy used by winning players is fairly consistent. If you identify the winning players and know the strategy they are using, you can exploit it. Likewise, losers are losing for a reason—they are making bad decisions.
So how do you identify winning and losing players? I use an online databased at Sharkscope.com. Sharkscope is the world’s largest database of online sit ‘n go results. Sharkscope charges a subscription fee to access the information, but the fee is well worth it. In the next two pages I will run through what I do at the start of every sit ‘n go to begin profiling players.
