Strategy with Kristy: Terrence Chan
Terrence Chan, two-time winner of the PokerStars Spring Championship of Online Poker, is the latest guest on the Strategy with Kristy podcast. In 2009, Chan became the first player to win two SCOOP events in one day. He took down the medium and high buy-in ($530 and $5,200 respectively) for Event #20, a six-max limit hold'em tournament. Chan spoke with host Kristy Arnett about helpful strategies when playing an extended online tournament series.
Here is a snippet from the interview:
When you are looking to play a long online tournament series such as SCOOP, do you think it's important to map out a tentative schedule?
Yeah, and I think the key word there is tentative. I don't think you should be super strict about it. For example, for the World Series of Poker schedule, I basically look at every tournament and put it in a spreadsheet. I put a number, on a scale of one-to-five, of how much I want to play in the tournament. Some events, I just know I'm not going to play. If they aren't my game or out of my buy-in range, or if I feel like I'd be really bored playing it, I'll put down a one or a two. And then for a events that I know I definitely want to play, it will be a five.
I think it's important to be flexible about this because maybe you just wake up one morning, and you just feel burned out. Maybe the night before you went deep in a tournament and you were the stone bubble. As tempting as it is to get back on that horse, you should think about whether you're in the right state of mind to play. Don't force yourself to play. If you are an absolute professional and can forget about the past, then that's great. You should play. But, you have to look at yourself and be honest. Ask yourself, "Am I in a good emotional state? Do I feel like playing? Am I prepared to play 16 hours?" You have to ask yourself that because some of these SCOOP events are really long.
The worst thing that can happen is that you play for seven or eight hours, you play great, and then you just say, "F*** it. I'm done with it. I'm just going to ship it in. I don't really care anymore." I mean, we've all done that. Everyone does that in a tournament from time to time, but it's a really terrible thing to do. You're better off just not playing in the first place.
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