Lesson - tournament play

With a basic understanding of starting hands and positional play I now started researching tournament play. This is how I approached tournaments and how I applied my new knowledge to tournament play.

Step 1 - Initial strategy - I played my starting hands and positional play knowledge in tournaments in Southern California and had varying results. Sometimes I would progress through several tables towards the final table and sometimes I would go out within a few minutes of the tournament start. Then I read an article which made complete sense. Tournaments are full of fish and beginner players who can knock you out by playing any 2 cards and getting lucky. Of course, prior to learning about starting hands and positional play I was probably one of those fish. The best way to avoid the fish is to not play any hands for the first hour or so of the tournament (obviously the time depends on how many players enter the tournament). I read more on this and it seems to be a common approach to only play AA or KK and sometimes AK in the early part of the tournament. The idea is to let the fish play each other and knock each other out, then when you start playing your game there are less fish left in the tournament likely to knock you out. Also the fish remaining might have a lot of chips and it should be easy to take those chips away from them. This strategy had a massive impact on my game and I went from being knocked out of tournaments early to making the last third of players on a consistent basis.

Step 2 - Too tight - I was consistently being knocked out of tournaments in the last third. If there were 120 players I might finish 35th. I was running low on chips waiting for my Great hands (as listed in my starting hands article) to be dealt to me. Eventually I would be forced all-in because my stack was so small I had no choice and often I would lose. In a best case scenario I would win one or two all-in situations but would soon be back to the short-stack and would eventually lose. This happened time and time again and often I would lose to what I thought were lucky players. For example I might have 10-10 and the lucky player 7-6 and he would hit a straight or a set of 7s at the showdown. It took me a while to figure out why a "good" poker player like me kept getting these "bad beats". Then one day a kind older man who I had seen make the final table a few times explained to me that I was "too tight" or "not aggressive enough" and I would never win any tournaments playing like I was until I learnt to become aggressive. This sent me on a new phase of research - what is an aggressive player.

Step 3 - Too aggressive - if you read the books and Internet articles you soon learn that "every good tournament poker player" is very aggressive in their play. They fire bets off on 7-6 off suit, pairs of 3s, A-4 off suit etc. If you watch the World Series of Poker final tables on television you see bets going in with Q-4, any Ace, even 10-2 off suit. What is going on - my starting hand strategy appears to be completely wrong. I entered a few tournaments playing my tournament strategy with an aggressive stance. I would play for an hour or so really tight just playing aces and kings and then change to aggressive and play a whole range of hands with big bets. I continued to lose but this time I went out of the tournament even earlier. I would fire a bet with 10-9 suited and not hit my hand so another players pair would knock me out. Or I would go all-in with 8-8 and watch someones A-J become a big pair. My aggressive play was wrong but all the books told me this was what I had to do to win tournaments.

Step 4 - the pros view - I did some research on top pros about aggressive play and they seemed to be a little more selective saying words of wisdom such as 'Only play good starting hands or hands with potential but when you decide to play a hand play it aggressively". Some pros emphasized position over starting hands - one article claimed that a player actually won a tournament without looking at their cards at all. They fired off bets based on their position and the betting patterns of the other players in the tournament. This almost suggests the position is MORE important than the cards - something I understand but struggle to utilize effectively.

Step 5 - my own style - I tried to apply as much of the different wisdom as I could to my game. I still slow played in the first third of the tournaments, then as my chip stack started getting low in relation to to the increasing blind amounts I started to play a little more aggressivey. I still believe in my starting hands but played more positional plays especially with OK hands. I played more small pairs cautiously trying to hit a set after the flop. I played A-x and K-x flush possibilities cautiously hoping to get 4 cards to a flush after the flop. These are a new category of hand which I will call "Growing hands" - they have the potential to grow after the flop into Great hands. I also started playing more suited connectors (10-9, 9-8, 8-7) in late position trying to hit a straight. This style started to pay dividends and I started to get into the last 3 or 4 tables of tournaments. I figured it was just a matter of time......

I will update the tournament strategy in a later article because it took a fair bit of effort from going to Step 5 to a consistent tournament winner.