Woke up at an odd time due to my cold, decided to sit down and read a book, and find out my investments, watch early Squawkbox on #CNBC, and play a tournament in the background. That's how taxing my strategy is to play. Multi-tasking is no problem if you know what to look for in other poker players and how they play.
Since players play few hands per minute, and you don't need to observe much in play like watching what they are playing from early, middle, and late position there isn't much to making money.
You raise, reraise, call, and fold and you watch how often and what they play. That puts very little effort into the task. It makes it a low attention side activity.
I finished 23 out of 690 players. While reading.
If you read my book and develop strategies the way I recommend, your cards don't matter (* as much) and your position doesn't matter. You aren't playing normal. You aren't a fish. You aren't a TAP - tight aggressive player, and so on. You should be playing adaptive ( tight at a loose table, loose at a tight table, reraising weak players in position, reraising bluffs, check calling landmines, and so on ) so your plays are AUTOMATIC. You are making everyone confused and adapt to you. It doesn't take much effort once you understand. My book is very comprehensive so it's like you've played 1 million hands before you sit down.
I got lucky on a few hands once I made the money. I caught a King and a Queen to save myself at 50 players. I caught a Broadway to beat Aces. But that's normal. You will need to get lucky ( convergence of events - I write about it in my book) to win a tournament or finish in the final table but you can coast into the money if you understand how people are playing and make the right actions ( raise, call, fold, reraise) to perplex them and make them give you chips when they are behind and avoid losing chips when drawing dead.
Don't expect to finish top 20 very often at first. Don't expect more than money cash until you get a run of good cards after the money bubble bursts. You still need to win hands to win, but you can use all the other factors - representation, position, player types, and so on to get extra chips and survive in some tournaments.
Easywithaces is a #pokerstars pro that plays low-stakes tournaments these days. In the same tournament he finished 661. That's not always the case, I've watched him finish in the top 20 also. The advantages pros have is they aren't afraid to experiment at low stakes and they aren't afraid of reraises. But they aren't stupid. They play relatively tight.
I finished 23rd. Investing $11 returned 5.20 times my investment.
And while I was hanging around finishing this tournament, I played another other low-stake tournaments and I placed in the top 6% of 1906 entrants. Two tournaments, two in the money finishes in 3 hours.
Read my book, learn to do this while you watch TV.
