Secrets of Professional Tournament Poker, Volume 1 (14 page)

Very few people will put a play on you in the middle of a conversation. If you and the player on your left are talking about his new house when you decide to raise, if he re-raises you, he will almost always have a premium hand. If you stop talking to each other for around 15 minutes, the play generally reverts back to normal. Because of this, you should generally talk about more detailed subjects toward the end of the day when the blinds will be highest. Another time to bring out the chattiness is when you are short-stacked. If you only have 10BBs left, you will usually be stealing. You can make a comment like, “I am only going to go all-in with a big pair or ace-king.” Obviously this isn’t true, but many people, especially your new friends, will believe it and give you credit for a big hand when you push.

One other thing I do often comes up when a player is constantly trying to either re-raise me or steal my blinds. If someone raises my blind two or three times in a row, I will usually say something like, “You are going to steal my blinds every time, huh?” This is usually enough to let them know I am going to start playing back at them, whether it is true or not. Getting an extra walk deep in a tournament can be enormously valuable.

When Someone Tries to Outplay You

If you have a loose image, some players will eventually try to outplay you. Figure out who these players are. Some players will sigh, look frustrated, and maybe say something like, “I guess I’ll fold again,” but they will never do anything about it. This chapter addresses the players who get upset that you are running over the table and will try to do something about it.

Players who will go out of their way to try to outplay you generally don’t say anything or act upset, as they know that would blow their plan. But, if you are paying attention, you will see them look at you in an odd way, as if they are out to get you. Once you see this for the first time, you will know what I am talking about. It’s almost as if they want to make you pay for running over everyone. When you see this, realize that you are going to play a decently big pot with this person in the near future.

I like to raise, let the player re-raise, and then go all-in, assuming that makes sense given the stack sizes. He will usually fold. If the stacks are deep, I try to call his raises with hands that flop decent top pairs, and then go into call-down mode, try to act as weak as possible and hope he bluffs off a lot of chips. If I raise before the flop and he calls, I will usually continuation-bet my entire range on the flop, and then go into check-call mode with all pairs or better, again allowing him to bluff. The key is to not be too concerned with getting all-in. He will usually have a weak hand that can’t stand any pressure. Because of this, you generally need to check-call down against these players when you have a decent made hand.

You can trap some of the most aggressive players by being aggressive yourself. Say I raise A
-J
and it comes J
-J
-3
. If I suspect my opponent will try to put a play on me, I will bet this flop every time, and assuming we are very deep-stacked, I will even raise again if he re-raises me on the flop. Make sure you both have enough chips so that he can rationalize an all-in bluff, allowing you to win a huge pot.

You have to figure out how to get your opponents to put in a lot of chips when they have nothing and you have something. What you should not do is bet a hand like middle pair and then fold to a raise against a player that you think is going to try to outplay you. Say you raise A-10 and it comes J-10-3. Be content to just check-call down, because your hand can’t stand much pressure.

Don’t become paranoid and think everyone is going to try to outplay you. Once this happens, you will be afraid to raise anyone’s blinds. Raising blinds constantly is the whole reason players will start to play back at you in the first place, so you should usually keep the pressure on because you want them to make –EV bluffs.

To generalize, the people most likely to try to outplay you are older, non-white males and the more aggressive young kids. For some reason, old white men and tight young kids don’t try to outplay people too often. They like to play a tighter style. Also, people that fold a lot in late position when it is folded around to them tend not to try to outplay people. They don’t even try to outplay the random hands of the blinds.

If you can pinpoint when someone is going to put a play on you before it happens, you will usually find yourself with a huge pile of chips.

My Style

There is much discussion over which style of play is better, one where you try to play lots of small pots, called “small ball”, or one where you try to play a few large pots, called “long ball”. You have to play a decent number of pots if you want to make it in poker tournaments. Waiting for A-A, hoping to double up every time you get it, will not work in the long run.

There are three main reasons for this. First, if you play only premium hands, you will be playing about 7 percent of hands, which is much less than you need to play to maintain your chip stack. Second, most opponents are observant enough to realize how tight you are playing, so you will rarely get action when you pick up a good hand. On average, you will lose the blinds every orbit but will only win the blinds every 0.7 orbits, meaning that you should expect to lose 0.3 sets of blinds on every orbit. This will clearly cause you to go broke over time.

Finally, even if you are patient and get all the money in as a 2-to-1 favorite, you will usually have blinded off your stack so much that even if you win the hand, you will just be back at the stack you started with. For example, say you have 20BBs and decide to blind off until you get a premium hand. If you blind down to 10BBs and get all-in with A-A vs. 4-4, you will double up 80 percent of the time to 20BBs, which is where you started, and 20 percent of the time you will go broke. Waiting for a big hand is a sure way to go broke in no-limit holdem tournaments.

Weaker players often say that if they didn’t constantly suffer bad beats, they would do well in tournaments. They fail to realize that everyone will lose hands as a huge favorite throughout a tournament. You have to build up a large chip stack to survive these beats and still have a chance to win. If you are blinding off and waiting for a big hand, you are setting yourself up to get all-in, which leads to going broke. If you can avoid ever being all-in throughout a tournament, it will be tough to go broke. That does not mean you should raise to 3BBs out of your 10BB stack and fold to an all-in re-raise. It means that you should keep a large stack and maintain the aggression, picking up numerous small pots while still getting large amounts of money in as a favorite.

Small ball is so effective because people fold too often. If you can make most opponents fold by raising to 2.2BBs pre-flop, and then betting 2.5BBs on most flops, by all means do it. In the high-stakes tournaments though, most players realize that when they’re getting 5-to-1 to see a flop, they should usually take it. Also, when they are getting 3-to-1 on the flop, there are huge odds to call or bluff. Because of this, the extreme version of small ball that is preached by a few of the big tournament winners does not work too well in high-stakes tournaments. I have figured out that if, instead of basically min-raising pre-flop, you raise to 2.5BBs and make reasonably-sized continuation bets, you will accomplish all the goals of small ball, while still getting some of the respect of a long-ball player.

When you raise more than your fair share of pots, people will eventually start to call. This isn’t a problem if you will be in position in most hands and can induce your opponents to fold post-flop. Because of this, you need to size your raises pre-flop a little larger so you can later make flop and turn bets a little larger, which will get you many more folds. You need to be in position. If you are constantly raising hands out of position, you are destined to lose.

Another huge benefit of this hybrid style that I play is that when you actually get a good hand, instead of winning only a decent amount of chips, you can usually get your opponent’s entire stack. If you min-raise pre-flop and then bet half-pot on the flop, you will find it tough to get your entire stack in if you make a strong hand. If you raise just a tiny bit more pre-flop, you can get all-in as long as your stack is around 80BBs or less, which it will be once you get to the middle stages of most tournaments, because the pot tends to grow exponentially in no-limit holdem.

People generally bet around the size of the pot or a bit less, so you tend to make small bets if the pot is small and larger bets as the pot grows. You don’t have to make larger bets. But it’s an option. It’s well worth the risk of raising by 0.3BB more before the flop to give yourself many more options throughout the hand. Because you are raising to a slightly larger amount pre-flop, you should tighten your range a bit. You need to win a higher percentage of pots pre-flop because you’re giving yourself slightly worse odds to steal the blinds. This is usually negligible though, as the extra 0.3BB you raise over a normal small-ball strategy will win the blinds a higher percentage of the time.