Gus Hansen and the ANZPT (Star City, Sydney)

So there I was ready to study PLO8 when I realised that I have a couple of live events coming up this weekend in the ANZPT (passouts permitting). Given the significant investment and the fact that the micro PLO8 games will still be there in a week, a month and a year, I decided to get back into live MTT mode. I've previously read Harrington and in fact built my style around it since it suits my older Gen-X grinder personality. I've recently listened to the ESPN Poker Edge series which was very superficial but passes the time between Avalon and North Sydney each day.

Then I asked a friend if I could borrow his Gus Hansen's 'Every Hand Revealed' book. I picked it up 2 days ago and am not even through Day 1 yet. I'm blown away. If you've read the book you'll know why. I just find myself consantly asking "you bet how much with what? wow". It is another level and way beyond me. I get it after the event, but the courage and wherewithall to execute with a Tai Chi-like combination of self-awareness / calm / aggression / control is incredible to me. That said, it is proving to be extremely enlightening. Live cash, I see multiple players play a similar aggressive style. 30% of them win a lot and 2/3 off them don't lose more than a couple of BIs max. That means that in aggregate, they are +EV as a group. I meanwhile consistently eek out a happy existence most sessions that equates to a burger flipping wage - but I rarely lose. As the amounts involved are relatively insignificant "why bother?" is a reasonable question.

Back to the ANZPT, even the few pages that I have read have me feeling better prepared for this weekends tournies. $275 Opening NLHE tomorrow, $330 Deepstack Sunday and then the $275 2nd Chance PLO on Tuesday. I will not be playing anything like Gus, grinding away Harrington style and hoping to Cash. Online I've matured from wanting to cash, to focussing on Final Tabling and more recently, hoping to win. This is a maturation that I am yet to go through live. If I can cash in 1 of the 3 Tournies I will be very happy. The chances of me doing so if all players are equal is less than 3 to 1. If I'm in the middle of the top 1/3 of each field, I'm even money to cash once. So that is sufficiently ambitious for me for now. Obviously if I run good, I may re-evaluate. Any nuggets of live MTT advice welcomed, especially PLO in the early stages. As always, my measure of success will be how well I played, how aware I was, how I maintained levels of concentration, how I changed gears, how I bothered to calculate and not switch off to just playing the cards as dealt.

If I go missing for a week, I'm either depressed or winning.