amateur poker player and a $500 buy-in tournament

[vtec4life]

So I won a tourny at grey eagle ($60 buy in) and ive maybe played maximum ten tournaments there. I've played a ton of home games and some cash games at the casino but by no means do i consider myself an experienced player, but I think i have some natural ability. Anyways, in winning that tourny i also won a $500 buy in to a wsop satellite kinda tournament (winner gets cash plus a $10,000 buy in to a serious wsop tourny). Im wondering if anyone has any tips on how to prepare for such a big tournament because i would love to do well as i am a broke ass student. any books i should read? any ways to practise? anyone i should talk to? all help is appreciated.

[project240]

Harrington on Holdem is a good series to read as well as anything published/written by Sklansky or 2+2 publishing.

I've played in a few of the larger buy in tourneys and as long as you play fairly solid for the first couple of hours, you shouldn't have a problem accumulating chips. The problem with a lot of their tournaments though is that at some point the blinds compared to stack sizes become fairly large and eliminate alot of the skill factor.

I believe it was Amir Vahedi who first said "In order to win (live) you must be willing to die"... basically meaning you must push certain edges in a tournament where you are a statistical favorite, risking your tournament life.

Also, try to figure out some way to increase your luck and win more races than you should (let me know if you figure out a way to do that).

Good Luck!

[aeroist]

you could sell your seat for cash to someone if you really wanted to. unless you really want to play.

[vtec4life]

ya someone offered to buy it off me but come onnnnnn I wont have a chance to play a $500 tournament for a long time if ever. the experience will hopefully be worth more than 3 or 4 hundo

[sexualbanana]

Since you're a relative noob (to the bigger games), if you want to learn, Harrington on Hold'em is the best book. Depending on the amount of time you have, the focus should be on vol. 1. Vol. 2 if you have the time, but I wouldn't fly through the first volume just to get to the second one.

And if you want to practice, then try playing online in one of the micro-buy-in, large field tournaments just to get used to constantly being moved around to full tables.

Single table sit n go's are only good if you want to practice bubble and final table strategy, but I wouldn't really worry about that at this point.