I'll take that as a compliment

I'm happy to post more but didn't want to ramble. If there are specific strategy or game texture questions, I'm happy to answer them.

I'm currently playing the 45 man Turbo tourny's on stars. One piece of advice I can give is choose a game (whether it's 9/18/27/45/90/180 man tournys, double or nothing's, satellites, cash games, etc etc), then search twoplustwo (or another reputable poker forum) for a guide to the game style you want to play.

I can say that since I discovered twoplustwo about a month ago, my game has almost doubled in strength. I've read pages and pages of strategy threads and guides to all the the games I like to play. The tips, strategy and advice you can get from that forum is indespensible.

The other thing that has improved my game is the Pokertracker software. When you're in the mid-late stages of a tourny, before the final table, and everyone is playing tight, trying to make it to the final table, having the pokertracker there to tell you which players you can steal from is a HUGE advantage.

To give you an idea of how helpful these guides are, I'm going to post the one I read focusing on micro buy-in 45 man tourny's. Read it (if you want to, of course). Understand it (thankfully, the way it's written it is very easy to understand). Then apply it to a cheap $1 forty-five man tourny. I can guarantee that you will see results in the way that you play almost immediately. (unless of course you are already an incredible poker player.)

Guide to PokerStars 45 Man Turbo Tournaments
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(Intro to the Intro)
I am by no means an expert Poker player, but I have had pretty consistent success at the turbo 45 man tournaments (sample size around 500), so I figured I'd do a brain dump. I know, I need another 30,000 tournaments before I know my true ROI yadda yadda yadda, but I think that given the smaller fields of these 45 mans you don't need a bazillion tourneys to have a general idea of whether you're doing OK. Maybe everything I'm suggesting is wildly wrong. Who knows.
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Hardgeus' Guide to PokerStars 45 Man Turbo Tournaments

Introduction/Audience

The audience for this guide is beginning players who are looking for a relatively safe way of learning the game and building a bankroll. It is also a guide specifically aimed at playing against mostly crappy players. I don't suggest you take my advice and try it out at the WSOP.

Why the 45 Man?

I have played several different structures of tournaments on PokerStars, and most of them left me feeling dirty in the morning. The 9 man Sit 'n Gos just don't seem to have enough payout for their variance. I didn't feel like I was crushing them, and I just had a slow slow upward grind. If I lost 4 or 5 in a row, I had a long grind to make back the money from those losses.

The larger tournaments, from 180 man up, were just too depressing. I couldn't stand sitting there for hours at a time, only to bust out on the bubble, or with a lame booby-prize of a mincash. Not only that, I could easily expect to lose 10 or 15 of those in a row before getting any sort of cash. No thanks.

The 45 man is the porridge that Goldilocks ate. The variance is not really markedly higher than the 9 man, and the payout is much more respectable. And while you don't get the big sexy payday of a 180 man, you can expect to get 2 or 3 first-place finishes (easily) in 45 mans in the same number of tries it takes you to get to one final table at a 180 man.

Why Turbo?

For quite a while I was sold on the 10 minute regular 45 man tourneys. I just felt that the variance was too high on the turbos, and I stuck to my guns. Then one day a poster on the 2+2 forums asked for opinions on turbos vs. regulars and I started crunching some stats on my games to post. Lo and behold, I was over 10% more profitable on the turbos than the regulars!

One obvious reason for this is that the rake on non-turbo 45 mans is usually around 20%, while the rake on turbos is usually 10% or even less. For example, at the one dollar level, the regular tournament is $1.20, while the turbo is $1.10. This may not seem like a big deal, but bear in mind that 40% ROI over the long term is very good – and a %10 cut from that profit makes a big difference.

I keep a spreadsheet of numbers and notes on every tournament I play, and I noticed something interesting: The early blind levels didn't really have a lot of effect on my ability to win the tournament. The first blind levels are really just a waiting room for the real game. My game was mostly made or broken once the blinds got up around 100/200 or so. Why bother spending the first 45 minutes just folding everything in sight? Crank up a turbo and have the tournament rapidly progress to the point where the blinds can actually add to your stack!

This guide is strictly regarding the $3.25 45 man turbo on Stars, and if my limited sample size is any indicator, also the $6.50 turbo.

Fundamentals

First of all, realize that cash games and tournaments are drastically different beasts. You can easily destroy yourself as a tournament player by failing to grasp this fact and only playing A+ premium hands as the blinds disintegrate your stack. In many ways, tournament Poker isn't really Poker at all. “Trueâ€

Nice read. Thanks!

Problem is, I just don't enjoy playing "system" poker. I like to play my own style, change it up, and not dive TOO deeply into the numbers game. That just seems to take the fun out of it. As long as I'm winning money playing "instictive" poker and having fun, I'll stick to that.

I don't play pure system poker either, but just paying attention to position alone will improve your performance.