In an effort to try and improve my tournament play last Saturday I attended one of Brian 'bfizz11' Fite's MTT Coaching Webinars.

Last week I posted what I learned about Brian Fite and his webinars so I won't go into detail about his success in MTTs and other poker accomplishments but I wanted to post a review to illustrate what the experience was like.

Getting Registered

The first step is to contact Brian letting him know when you're interested in attending his webinar. His contact information is available on his website www.bfizz11.com.

If you're interested in attending more than one webinar he currently seems to be willing to discuss discounts so let him know how many you'd like to attend and ask what he can offer you.

Once you've agreed to sign up for his MTT coaching webinars you then make payments. For most players this will likely be through a transfer on either FTP or PokerStars.

Preparing For The Webinar

First, make sure you have the time available since the webinar runs at least 5 hours. Also gather some questions and hand histories of spots you want advice on.

The webinar uses GoToMetting.com which requires some software to be installed.

The process of getting the software set up is simple. You'll receive a link via email for the webinar. Clicking on the link will guide you on how to download and install the software. It took a few minutes but it was fairly simple.

After you have the software installed you request access to the webinar and you'll receive a second email that provides a link that will get you in. At least that's how I remember it.

Participating in the MTT Webinar

OK, you've got everything done and you've signed into the webinar. What you're going to see is a live view of bfizz's monitor where he loads up his tournaments for the day.

He uses a 30" monitor so if you don't have a monitor that large your going to have to view the webinar slighly reduced in size.

I have a 22" widescreen monitor and I had no problem following the action.  Even reading his HUD stats was possible.

Brian seems to be mindful of the fact that not everyone is going to be using a 30" monitor and keeps the tables big enough for us less fortunate to view. Good news is because of the coaching I'll probably hit a big score soon and head over to NewEgg to get one. ;)

During the session Brian is on mic talking through his thoughts on different hands and even commenting on some hands he's not in as well as general strategy.

The GoToMeeting interface allows viewers to participate in one of two ways.  You can type in a question that only the meeting moderator can read and Brian will answer it, or you can click a "raise hand" button which will let you use your pc mic to ask a question verbally.

Brian was very good about answering questions thoroughly that were typed in. Nobody used the mic during last session so I'm not sure how that works. Or maybe only the meeting moderator can hear???

Review

From a technical aspect, getting set up for the webinar was very easy. Click a link, click a button, run some software, click another link. The video and audio quality were good and the interface was fairly simple to figure out.

This was the first time I participated in something like this and I don't really know any good poker players near me that I can actively share ideas with. I knew that watching a successful MTT player at work would be beneficial but I was still surprised how much I actually got out of it.

Being able to hear his thoughts on hands and ask questions in real-time is a great way to learn. Brian did a good job of keeping us informed of his thoughts. He has a grind house where he lives with a few players he coaches and stakes and he also makes videos for BlueFirePoker so it's no surprise he comes off as an experienced coach in his webinars.

Even from just one session I feel I learned a lot and my confidence has improved with regards to tournaments. If one webinar is good, more should be better. :)

Different people have different trouble spots in tournaments so being able to see how someone else handles that situation and ask why they did what they did can be very helpful rather than just reading about what someone decides to write in a book.

As I was watching the webinar I pretended I was the one playing each tournament and thought about what I would do in each hand. If he did something different than I would have done and I couldn't understand why it was great being able to ask him to help understand it better.

During the session I attended, not many people brought hand histories for review and neither did I so I can't really comment on that aspect of the webinar.

Overall I'm very happy that I attended the webinar and plan on attending another.  If you're looking for a way to improve your MTT results this seems to be a very good way to do it and given how long each webinar lasts, it's quite reasonably priced.

You can find out more about Brian Fite and his webinars at bfizz11.com or follow him on Twitter (@bfizz11).

So I've been bitching about my frustration with MTTs lately and I decided it's time to do something about it. Namely finding an  MTT Poker Coach.

OK, maybe I stumbled into that decision. You see, some time ago I started adding some poker players to follow on my twitter account. Some of them because I've heard something about them, some of them because someone else I followed followed them and things like that. Point is, I'm not very familiar with everyone I've followed.

All I know is that there's one MTT regular on twitter, @bfizz11 (Brian Fite) whose tweets stood out to me because they're all similar. "Final table in xxx mtt", "just won xxx mtt for lots of money", "deep in the xxx mtt ". It seems like this guy's making one or two final tables every day. I'm not exaggerating. Here are his last 4 tweets.

bfizz11 Brian Fite
I took 3rd for $2k and min-cashed the Nightly, a good day overall. Getting to bed early tonight so I can crush it tomorrow.

bfizz11 Brian Fite
6 handed in the $55 rebuy and approaching the $$$ in the $163 Nightly on FTP

bfizz11 Brian Fite
25 left $55 1r1a on stars and 13 left in the $55 rebuy on AP

bfizz11 Brian Fite
31 left in a $55 on FTP, in the $11 rebuy money...cashed almost every tourney today so far it seems like time to close one out!

At first I thought this can't be real. Must be some guy that created a program that just randomly pulls tournament names and adds results or something like that. One day the program would have a bug that would be obvious and tweet something like 'I just finished %random(1-9)% in %getRandomTournament()%' or something like that. But it never happened so I did some digging.

After looikng up bfizz11's results it turns out Brian 'bfizz11' Fite's results are real! Before I really knew much about him I decided to contact him to find out if there's some way he could help me improve my mtt results, especially with regards to going deeper in MTTs and making more final tables.

Since my first contact with him I've learned a lot more about Brian. If you follow the tournament leaderboards you've probably heard of bfizz11. I don't, so I haven't. Here's a summary in case you're like me, plus some other facts.

• Won a monthly Tournament Leaderboard Title
• Won 3 Weekly Tournament Leaderboard Titles
• Was 3rd in the PokerStars 2010 Yearly Tournament Leaderboard
• Has over $125k in SnG Profits
• Around $1.5 Million in MTT cashes
• Makes Videos for BlueFirePoker
• Was on the 2010 WSOP Main Event feature table (finished in the money)
• Offers a weekly mtt coaching webinar

After messaging Brian I decided to give his mtt coaching webinar a try. It seems like an affordable poker coaching option even for someone on a micro stakes bankroll. :)

About bfizz11's MTT Coaching Webinar

Once a week Brian has a coaching session he conducts over the web, a webinar. The webinar lasts a minimum of 5 hours of watching Brian during an MTT session.

During the session Brian explains what he's doing and why and students can ask questions over their mics. In addition he'll review hand histories submitted by viewers.

Brian keep's the webinars small in size to give each attendee an opportunity to participate in the discussion.

A single webinar costs $150. That's less than $30/hr (since sessions run longer when he runs deep) which seems like a really good value to me.

So I'll be attending my first MTT webinar with Brian 'bfiz11' Fite soon and I'm really looking forward to it. I'll update my blog once I've completed it.

In the meantime you can keep up with Brian by following him on twitter (@bfiz11) and find out more about him and his poker coaching on his website bfizz11.com.

PokerStars came out with a new game type, the Fifty50 Sit & Go. They're a bit similar to the Double or Nothing (DoN) Sit & Gos where the 5 players left standing of the initial 10 get double their buy in and the game ends after half the field is gone. These games are available in Turbo and normal speed.

I played some to get a feel for the games and wanted to share info on the games and my thoughts.

There are a few key differences for Fifty50's vs DoNs.

Payout Structure

Unlike the traditional DoN SnGs where the remaining 5 players all get paid the same amount, in a Fifty50 SnG half of the prize is distributed evenly (winners get their buy-in, not including rake, back) and the other half is distributed based on chip counts.

The formula for payout is buy-in + (end chips/total chips) * (0.5 * total prize pool)

The different payout structure gives players incentive to accumulate chips otherwise they'll barely make a profit for the game if they finish in last place.

It can also reduce the incentive to implicitly collude. If a short stack pushes all in on the bubble and two players call they might fight over the pot to accumulate more chips and win more money.

Blind Structure

The blind structure of these tournaments is very different from DoN SnGs or even the regular full ring SnGs on PokerStars.

Blind levels go up in smaller increments but each level is 6 minutes compared to 10 minutes for DoNs and regular SnGs. Turbo Fifty50 games have 3 minute blind levels.

As a result the blinds go up faster. After 30 minutes in a Fifty50 SnG you'll be playing 40/80 with a 5 chip ante compared to 25/50 with a 5 chip ante.

Are Fifty50 SnGs Worth Playing?

I played a few of these to test them out. At first it seems like it might not be worth the effort if you're a regular DoN player. You'll have to cash in significantly more than 50% of the tournaments or end with a big chip lead enough times to make the games worth it.

The good news is that these games seem to be really soft right now so it's not hard to have a high ITM rate and a good ROI. These games also have 25% less rake than DoN SnGs. With a DoN you're paying 8% in rake, with these you're paying only 6%.

When they first came out I saw a few don regs playing them but they didn't seem to stick with them so the fields aren't all that tough. I usually play around 10 DoNs at a time so I tried doing the same with these and out of all my tables there was only one player that I had come across before.

I'm going to try and play a few more sets and get a better feel for them but they're not as horrible as I thought they might be. The problem for me is because it's less rake you're also earning less VPPs/FPPs and right now I'm on a bit of an FPP kick.

After only 2 days my new Logitech M500 Mouse arrived from Newegg.com even using their standard 3-day ground shipping. Ever since I've discovered them I don't think I've ever bought any computer hardware from anywhere else.

My old mouse, a Logitech MX-310 was tilting the crap out of me. It seems the cord had developed a short and was cutting in and out and buttons where being pressed when I didn't press any.

That's a recipe for disaster when you have multiple poker tables open. I had timed out a few instances with big hands while I was wiggling the cord trying to get the mouse to come back. I also had some unfortunate misclicks.