90 Man Tournament Win

It's been a year or more since I've been in "tournament mode" but with my Vegas trip coming up soon and the plan to play a bunch of tournaments there, I felt the need to practice up online some. I found some pretty good tournaments over at FullTiltPoker. They have 3 styles of tournaments: turbo which is crazy luck fast blind increases, regular which has 10 min blind increases and starting chips of 1500, and double stack which has you starting with 3000 chips and gives a ton of play. I'd say these double stack tournaments are the best way to get practice at both deep stack and short stack play. I've been playing mostly the $22 buyin 90 man sit and go touraments which start as soon as they fill up (about once an hour or so). I even managed a win and a 5th place finish so far out of about a dozen tournaments.

On that note, I picked up a new book called Poker Tournament Formula which I can confidently say has changed my game more than any other book I've read, which is quite a mountain of books (around 30). When playing tournaments you have 3 weapons at your disposal: chips, cards, and position. Since most tournaments have pretty short stacks compared to blinds I was limitting myself to mostly playing my cards. I've found since reading this book that position raises and continued agression can pick up quite alot of chips during a tournament if the right conditions show up. You should never allow yourself to just be blinded out because you didnt pick up some big hands preflop. I suggest you pick up this book if you play any number of tournaments.