With the World Series of Poker coming up next month, I’d like to talk about playing poker tournaments. If you watch a lot of televised poker, you’ll often see the same players making the final table at the major events. Yeah, they sometimes suck out to get there, but for the most part, it’s because they understand tournaments and how to play them. Here’s some things to think about on your way to the TV table!
Tournaments vs. Cash Games
Tournament play is different than cash game play. In cash games, you can be patient, wait for good hands or situations to develop and try to get paid off. You’re trying to accumulate money over time, but you don’t need to take all the chips on the table in one session. And you can pretty much pick up when you want, cash out, hit the bar, whatever.
In tournaments, though, the blinds increase at regular intervals putting pressure on your stack. And to win a NL poker tournament and get the big money, you need to accumulate EVERY single chip in play and be the last one standing. This means you need to be aggressive, take risks and push every edge from start to finish in your effort to build your stack.
In my experience, most poker tournaments can be broken down into the following stages.
Early Stage
Early in the tournament, the blinds are low and everyone holds about the same number of chips. At this stage, you want to see flops cheaply and avoid over-committing with weak hands or draws. Play your good hands aggressively, but your goal is to accumulate chips with big hands, avoid giving away chips with marginal hands or weak draws and let the weaksauce players bust out.
Middle Stage
In the middle stage, you need to exercise controlled aggression and take advantage of position and your relative chip stack. Push your best hands hard here, bluff selectively and raise unopened pots from mid-to-late position to accumulate blinds and antes uncontested.
If you’re getting short-stacked (fewer than 10 blinds in your stack), you need to shove your chips in when it’s folded to you. If you bust out now, so be it. Your goal in the middle stage is to build a chip stack large enough to carry you past the bubble toward the final table or payout and the only way to do that is to BE AGGRESSIVE.
I often here players commenting that they were “card dead” in the tournament and got blinded off. No good tournament player EVER gets blinded off and, in fact, top players consider it shameful to be blinded down to the felt. Here’s a secret…you get the same cards as everyone else. The only difference is that instead of getting blinded off, the aggressive players start shoving their stack around to pick up chips.
Late Stage
Late in the tournament and on the “bubble”—when the remaining field is approaching the number of paid spots—players tend to tighten up. This is the time when you need to really force yourself to raise pots with hands that you might otherwise discard pre-flop. If you’re aggressive here, you’ll be surprised at how many chips you can accumulate, but it takes courage and discipline.
If you’re like most players, you’ll find this unnatural at first—raising with hands that you’d otherwise muck. Again, though, most players tighten up here and they can’t see how ugly your cards are, so lots of times you’ll pick up the pot outright. Sure, you might get caught with your K7o by someone holding AA, but most of the time, you end up picking up blinds and antes and adding to your stack. And even your K7o has a 13% chance against the rockets. Against other random hands that your opponent might hold (J9s, 68s, etc.), you’re actually a 57/43 favorite!
Final Table
Once you’re at the final table, I’m assuming you’ve had a chance to watch most of the other players and get a sense of their tendencies. Depending on the size of your stack relative to your opponents, you need to continue to be aggressive and not think about the money. Too many players play cautiously here, but the big money is usually in the top 2 or 3 spots and you’re not going to get there by folding! Continue to lean on your competition but avoid unnecessary bluffs against the big stacks and short stacks—they’re more inclined to call with marginal hands.
The Winnah!
Ok, it’s down to the final few. I’ll be honest, you need to be skilled, but you also need get lucky in a few situations. Every winner of a big tournament had a couple of nasty suck outs along the way. The key is to be relentlessly aggressive throughout—RAISING and RE-RAISING instead of CALLING—even when you’re feeling nervous. If you do that, you’ll be surprised how many people through their hands away. Of course, you need to be observant. If a guy’s been calling down light, you might turn it down, but again, no one ever won a tournament by folding. But if you’re AGGRESSIVE, you’ll be surprised how lucky you can get!
Final Thoughts
NEVER give up. If you take a bad beat and you still have chips, you’re still in it. Every tournament has some story about a guy down to his last couple of chips who makes it all the way back to the money. Instead of whining about the beat, be the miracle story! A chip and a chair, baby!
And last thing, practice. Club One Casino offers daily NL tournaments for as little as $15 to buy-in. You can find other cheap online tournaments and home game tournaments that will be good practice. Try some of the things I suggest in practice and you’ll be on your way to the final table on ESPN!
Note: If you want to learn more about playing NL poker tournaments, the following books might help:
Harrington on Hold’em vol. 1 and vol 2. by Dan Harrington and Bill Robertie
Tournament Poker for Advanced Players by David Sklansky
Making the Final Table by Erick Lindgren
Su Kim is Head of Player Relations at Club One Casino at Van Ness & Tulare in downtown Fresno. She’s an accomplished live and online player with tournament victories at Club One Casino and the Commerce Casino in Los Angeles. She can be reached at sukim@clubonecasino.com.
